It is almost 9am. The white-tiled Radio Guangzhou building is eerily empty. Its long corridors are filled with marching rhythms from another time - I Love Five-finger Mountain, I Love Ten-thousand-Spring River - a revolutionary song booming from a loudspeaker.

Guillaume Cadilhac signs me into a studio guarded by a stony-faced policeman, his handgun conspicuous on his belt. He greets the soldier in Cantonese: "Zou sang [morning]!''

I am startled by how heavily protected the place is.

``Didn't you know all studios on the mainland are like this?'' Cadilhac says, rolling his eyes. As strategic assets of the state, radio stations are well guarded.

``Zou Sang! This is Radio Guangzhou 102.7 FM Golden Tunes. Here's our handsome Frenchman, Ka Youmin!'' announces a promo in Cantonese as the show begins.

Ka Youmin is Cadilhac's Chinese name. He explains its meaning on air: ``Karaoke protects the people.'' The Frenchman is the first and perhaps still the only Putonghua-speaking foreign radio host on the mainland.

``Since I'm a French guy, it's time for romance. I've got some music for your drive to work,'' he announces in flawless Putonghua. Celebrating the birthday of Harry Belafonte, he tells the audience how much his mother admired the 1960s calypso singer because he was a leong zai - Cantonese for good-looking boy.

His segments of French rock, Canto-pop and mainland rap somehow fit naturally between news items about the latest anti-corruption campaign in Guangzhou and the coming session of the National People's Congress.

He reads out an e-mail from a listener who's studying French in Cadilhac's birthplace - the town of Beziers. He teaches the audience the French words femme fatale during a segment on French words used in the English language.

``If you're a woman who wants to nag your husband to buy a fancy car, you may want to act the femme fatale,'' he instructs.

From a thin computer screen, he reads out SMS messages fans have sent from their cell phones. Some beg him to tell romantic tales about France, one even asks him what he ate the previous night. He says he indulged in mutton kebabs with two friends from Hong Kong at a Xinjiang restaurant to celebrate his 12th year in China.

After the show wraps up, Cadilhac takes me to a small Fujian eatery outside the station for breakfast. He orders steamed dumplings and I complain of his one-sided choice. ``You're in my territory,'' he says.

I wonder if ``his territory'' means Guangzhou or food, since I well know his obsession with the latter. I first met him in 1999 over dinner gatherings with mainland friends when he lived in Hong Kong. He would travel all the way from Lamma Island to Sai Kung to eat my spicy Sichuan noodles, and in turn make sangria for us.

At that time, Cadilhac was artistic director for SmarTone in Hong Kong but he quit to pursue his dream of becoming famous in China.

He made a CD, singing French pop songs he translated into Putonghua and which he sang in a duet with Hong Kong starlet Rita Lau. The CD was never produced commercially but he realized his quest for fame anyway.

Now, as a local celebrity, Southern TV, Guangzhou TV (GZTV) and Guangdong TV have all aired documentaries on him. He regularly emcees music festivals and other events, and he's going national: He co-hosts a Cantonese-language show live on RTHK once a month and appeared on a popular CCTV show during the Lunar New Year singing a Cantonese opera song in falsetto.

He co-hosts a TV health show that's broadcast by more than 200 stations nationwide. His radio documentary Paris Ville Lumiere was recently awarded third prize by the China Radio and TV Society and also scooped awards in Guangdong.

His latest project is Green Apple, a weekly GZTV program on youth sex education. It's the first of its kind in China, he says. Far from titillating, he brushes it off as the most boring show he's ever hosted.

``It's not exactly about sex, it's about adolescence,'' he says. The program covers topics from dating and condom use to how to deal with sexual harassment and X-rated movies.

Tapping into the local teen fashion vibe, the pony-tailed 36-year-old appears on the show in tracksuit, a jacket and sneakers. He and his female co-host, Qi Qi, invite teenagers, their parents and teachers on to the show.

Sometimes it's the teenagers who teach Cadilhac about sex, informing him that ``ML'' is the online term for ``making love.'' Armed with the trendy talk, Cadilhac asks a 16-year-old girl on the next show if she has ever ``ML-ed'' and the reply is no. He is at a loss for what to say.

``If I were in France, I would have said to the girl: What's wrong with you? But Chinese parents would think I'm encouraging their daughters to have sex if I said that,'' he sighs.

He's in a delicate position. While the show's director rarely censors him, the only complaint is that Cadilhac is ``too conservative'' and should be ``more Westernized.''

``I've been in China long enough to know what not to say,'' he laments.``I must be very careful.''

On air, any mention of Xinjiang, Taiwan or June 4 is taboo.

``How's office politics?'' I ask.

``Politics? I never talk about politics!'' he raises his voice, before I clarify that my question is about his workplace and what it's like for a foreigner trying to fit in. When he began working at Radio Guangzhou co-hosting a morning show two years ago, colleagues avoided conversation and even eye contact with the Frenchman.

At weekly meetings, numerous co-workers, even cleaners, criticized his radio style. But station officials quickly recognized the selling point of having a French personality on air and gave him his own show last January.

He has gradually cultivated a number of loyal fans, mostly white-collar workers and taxi drivers aged between 25 and 35. Now even parents of his young fans tune into his program. Once a colleague called Cadilhac from a tea house, ecstatically telling him that he had just witnessed an old man listening to his show on a small transistor radio.

His fans give him affectionate nicknames - ``Lao [old] Ka,'' ``Xiao [little] Ka'' or ``Ka Ka'' - and see him as a local source on Western music and anything European. He hangs out with listeners for meals and drinks, and keeps in touch with them on SMS and MSN messenger, all written in Chinese. ``Some listeners are surprised when I write to them in Chinese, even though they have been listening to me for months,'' he says. ``In France, it wouldn't be that safe to meet listeners.''

He met his girlfriend, Long Yunna, through a listener. Long is an award-winning choreographer and dancer at the Guangdong Modern Dance Company. The couple live in a small one-bedroom apartment and have no car, unlike most of their rising middle-class contemporaries on the mainland. But materialism is not their focus. Aside from being in love, their romance lies in joint projects and they have co-produced a few modern dance shows in which Cadilhac has acted as music director. Most have been risque performances with dancers appearing near-naked onstage.

His colleagues have come to like the foreigner who earns a slightly higher salary, even inviting him to appear on their shows as a guest host.

For several months last year he regularly popped up on a Cantonese-language evening talkshow.

While declining to elaborate on exact numbers, Cadilhac says his show has achieved high ratings. ``Now the station's party secretary really likes me,'' he says proudly, and Guangzhou party secretary Lin Shusen even asked after him during a visit to the station last month.

It's been a long road to radio stardom. His passion for music and radio goes back to his teenage years, when he was a 15-year-old disc jockey on a boy scout radio show in France. After graduating from a broadcasting institute in Paris, he fell in love with kung fu and signed up with a Hunan martial arts school. But injuries he suffered days before he was to depart forced him to change to a Chinese-language program at Shanghai's Fudan University.

A three-month student visa in 1993 stretched to a 12-year stay. He began by hosting a French consulate-sponsored radio show, broadcast on more than 60 stations on the mainland in 1994. Later he supervized programs jointly produced by the French media group Europe One, Radio Shanghai, Radio Beijing and Radio Guangzhou.

He moved to Hong Kong in 1997. While radio in Beijing has improved since then, the media in Shanghai, he says, remains stale, and he prefers his current ``home'' area. ``The atmosphere on Guangzhou radio has always been very natural and fun,'' he says.

As we stroll in the former concession district of Shamian along the Pearl River, past waterways covered by a thick layer of black oil and smelling like a sewer, Cadilhac tells me how living standards in Guangzhou have changed since he moved back two years ago, and that he can now find his favorite cheese and French wine at Carrefour.

Cadilhac knows the value of being the French DJ in Guangzhou. The local media has hailed him for ``bringing a fresh breeze into the Guangzhou media'' and touts him as ``a foreign DJ who's at the level of ashes [more senior than the seniors].''

He is quick to assert he does not owe his success to being a foreigner. ``What I'm doing now is not because I'm a gweilo or because I speak good Putonghua or Cantonese. There are so many foreigners who can speak good Putonghua. There's chemistry between me and the microphone. I have a sense of humor and I'm always happy.''

The real chemistry is with the vast opportunities offered by the fast-growing media and entertainment industries on the mainland. His biggest dream is to organize large-scale entertainment events that feature local celebrities, and build on the popularity of his radio shows.

Donning a jacket he had tailor-made from a special local silk called ``Fragrant Cloud'' and carrying a canvas bag featuring Chairman Mao Zedong's portrait and his famous ``Serve the People'' slogan, Cadilhac reminds me of communist role models promoted by Mao. He volunteers to take me through narrow back alleys of the city to visit an old shoesmith, the last craftsman to handmake black cotton shoes in Guangzhou.

Master Liang, as Cadilhac calls him, has been forced out of his shop to make way for greasy American chicken - a branch of KFC. Cadilhac has tried his best to bring Liang's dire situation to the attention of the media but now all he can do is encourage his friends to buy the shoes and keep the old man and his craft alive.

Later, at La Terrasse, an outdoor cafe run by a former French diplomat under banyan trees in a quiet street, Cadilhac sips on pastis and sets a Louis Cha kung fu novel on the table. ``It feels like Paris when I'm here,'' he says. Behind him, a woman in a miniskirt spits on the pavement. Twice.

We later visit Tang Dynasty, a two-story club featuring giant surrealist roses painted on the walls and huge lamps with shades fashioned in the shape of breasts. A young Chinese girl in a black lacy mini dress wiggles on the stage to trance music. Bartenders, sporting numerous snake-like pigtails and long robes, roam around silently like wound-up dolls.

Cadilhac lights a Spanish cigar.

``Why do you love China so much?'' I ask.

It is everything, it seems, as I listen to him rave about the opportunities, the atmosphere, the openness, the excitement of the place. China, he says, is the only place to be.

``Ten years ago I never imagined I would be doing radio and television like this. Now I am swamped. It's crazy.''

rose.tang@singtaonewscorp.com