Ouyang Xiadan, former CCTV anchor, left her prime post in 2020 abruptly to care for her cancer-stricken mother, stepping back from public life long before reemerging in relaxed daily content.
In 2020, longtime viewers of *Xinwen Lianbo* suddenly noticed that Ouyang Xiadan, who had previously been seen as usual saying goodbye to her co-anchor from the anchor desk, had completely disappeared from all CCTV programs starting the very next day.
Once the
news spread, all sorts of speculation began circulating. Some said she had been dismissed from her employer for violating regulations, while others claimed she was suffering from a serious illness and was stepping back from the public eye. These rumors persisted for three full years, yet no definitive official statement was ever issued.
Few people realize that the seeds of this incident were sown as early as twenty years ago.At the time, Ouyang Xiadan had just established herself at CCTV. Seconded to Beijing from the Shanghai Television Station, she had weathered the initial challenges of finding housing in the capital and adapted to CCTV’s stricter broadcasting standards. Just as she was beginning to make a name for herself in the morning news segment, she suddenly received a call from the hospital informing her that her father had been diagnosed with cancer and was in critical condition.On her way home, her father had already passed away, and she was unable to see him one last time. She has kept this regret—of not being able to accompany her father on his final journey—buried deep in her heart for nearly two decades, rarely mentioning it to outsiders.
In 2020, Ouyang Xiadan suddenly received another notice from the hospital: her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Without a moment’s hesitation, she immediately handed in her resignation.
To outsiders, the anchor position on *Xinwen Lianbo* was a position that countless industry professionals would kill to attain—it was also the pinnacle of her career, reached after more than a decade of hard work at CCTV, where she had steadily built her seniority and honed her skills, starting as a morning news anchor. Yet she let it go just like that, and no amount of persuasion could change her mind.
For more than a year afterward, she was virtually absent from the public eye. She stayed by her mother’s side in the hospital ward, accompanying her through chemotherapy, helping to bathe her, and feeding her. After enduring the most grueling phase of treatment, she brought her mother home and cared for her around the clock until her mother passed away in 2021.For nearly two years after that, she made almost no public appearances, and no one knows exactly how she spent that time.
It wasn’t
until 2023 that a netizen happened to come across Ouyang Xiadan’s short video account. In the footage, she wasn’t wearing the polished on-air makeup she’d sported before, nor did she speak in her usual professional broadcasting tone; instead, she was dressed in casual clothes, sharing her daily life with the camera.occasionally taking on some compliant product-promotion collaborations and chatting with viewers about the little things in life. She appeared completely relaxed and at ease—a far cry from the constant tension she once exuded during her live-streaming days.
The once-renowned CCTV anchor, who had pushed her career to the absolute limit, now leads a quiet, ordinary life. Spending
more time with the family around her is always better than regretting it later.
