Terry Weng (left) and Ivy Huang, two hosts of the pop culture radio show Web Browser, at the HUA Voice Radio station, the first and only foreign language radio at the University of Washington in Seattle. Provided to China Daily

Every day after work as administrator of the writing center at the University of Washington in Seattle, Zhao Yunfei walks into a recording studio wearing a headphone and turns on amicrophone.

It's 10 pm and time for Ask the Senior, a nightly broadcast by Zhao, who graduated from the university last year and is co-founder and host of the student produced HUA Voice Radio.

As the only foreign-language radio station at the university, it covers local events as well as providingcultural information and in-depth political reports on various platforms such as its online website and wechat, a Chinese WhatsApp-like social network app.

During his program, Zhao interacts with his audience, who can sent him text and ask anything about campus life. "We need to be equipped with almost every piece of information in advance," said Zhao, who earned a bachelor's degree in communications in 2014. "It's a challenge."

HUA Voice Radio used to broadcast weekly. On Jan 23 it switched to a regular show five days a week,from 7 pm to 12pm.

"By the daily show, we hope to provide more first-hand information in and outside of our campus to the audience including Chinese-speaking students," said Zhao.

Newly recruited volunteers for HUA Voice Radio get 24-hour-long training with a professional broadcasting guide, and open-ended discussions are held so they can provide their own thoughts on what the radio station should broadcast rather than just following "the old path", Zhao said.

"We were seeking talent that has great learning abilities, people who are creative rather than those who are just experienced," Zhao said. He said the goal of recruiting creative people is to produce something that challenges people's traditional ideas of radio.

Since its first on-air broadcast on Jan 17 last year, the staff size has doubled to more than 30, with two thirds of them working on the station when it broadcasts from 7 pm to 12 pm, Monday to Friday.

"Our program also reaches out to the American students who are interested in Chinese language and culture," Zhao said. "Some of them came to our dialogue shows, talking about their campus life in Chinese."

More than 1,400 people listen to the station though smart phones, accounting for about 40 percent of the Chinese student population at the university, according to a report.

The idea for the Chinese program can be traced back to the October 2013.

"The first day I participated in a Chinese radio station in Seattle, I found that place wasn't as young as my heart was, so I was thinking, if I could start a radio station on campus like I was doing before in China,"said Dai Daren, agraduate student at UW who co-founded the HUA Voice radio.

Dai has been a broadcaster at Chinese Radio Seattle since June 2012 and was an reporting intern when he was an undergraduate in 2010 at Yangtze University, China.

With no other similar model of a Chinese student radio station in the United States, Dai said he didn't believe they could start one. "It was crazy," he said.

But they did.

A team of 14 students was formed to provide broadcast reports on the local community on Friday and Saturday nights.

Zhao said HUA Voice was initially part of the school's official radio station before the university helped it get its own studios.The official radiostation is run as a student organization with the Associated Students of the University of Washington. It is called Rainy Dawg and broadcasts in English.

Sheng Yang in Washington contributed to this story.