17/05/07 - A National Queuing Day and My Debut on Chinese TV

Lai le,

This is another form of greeting when you meet someone in China. It literally means, “I have come”, which you may think is an odd thing to say as it’s just stating the obvious. However, I think there is something quite regal about announcing your own arrival, so I might introduce the custom when I return to England.

I have come.

Can You Change A Country’s Queuing Culture?

It would seem the Chinese government have read my last blog entry as last Friday was a national queuing day. You may remember I commented on the queuing etiquette in China, or lack of one. It turns out the government are a little concerned that their billion strong population lack the ability to wait their turn. Therefore, in response, they have proclaimed that the eleventh day of every month from now until the Olympics be a queuing awareness day.

Saying that, I traveled on buses and the subway on Friday on the way into CRI and noticed no difference. I still had a small Chinese family all but sitting on my lap on the bus and had to employ my elbows to battle my way onto an overcrowded subway train. I only found out about the event when I arrived at the studios and had to edit a story on it.

Did I mention the CRI is a government run radio station? I think this could explain a lot. Also, often Chinese people use the English word “propaganda” instead of “publicity”, which I used to think was a mistake, but perhaps not.

Iraqi Prime Minister Sound Bite

On Friday, I had to record a sound bite for a CRI news programme. I went into a studio and they gave me the script. After a few minutes of translation (from Chinglish to English), I realised that I was about to voice a quote by the Iraqi Prime Minister. I spent a while pondering how to produce my best Middle Eastern/Arabic accent, before giving up and resorting to the good old Queen’s English. I wonder if the Chinese audience noticed I wasn’t Iraqi.

Television Debut

Then last weekend, I made my debut on Chinese TV. I had seen an advert on one of the Beijing ex-pat websites stating, “foreign actors required for CCTV documentary”, so seeing as I had ten minutes to spare, I applied. The advert also said, “no experience required”, which should always set alarm bells ringing in your head, however I chose to ignore them.

I received an email back confirming my role as a British officer and the date of filming. The only other information I received was the registration number of the van that would pick me up and the rendezvous point, which was exit A of the Military Museum subway station. You may think that these instructions sound slightly dodgy. At the time, I did too.

Needless to say, the van that eventually picked me up had a different license plate and the driver spoke no English. Luckily, a Canadian bloke was also being used that day and his Chinese was a little better than mine. He knew the word for “actor”, which was a good start.

CCTV-?

We drove for over an hour out into the countryside to the “film set” where my lack of prior research began to cause problems. I had thought it was a documentary for CCTV-9, the international and English speaking channel. However, sadly I was wrong. It was for CCTV-10, and no one spoke any English.

Luckily, my Canadian colleague by chance had a dictionary with him, which was a life-saver, especially when the director was trying to tell us in Chinese to act “deceitful”, not a word in my Chinese vocabulary quite yet.

While we were being given our costumes, the first amusing incident happened when they couldn’t find any black shoes big enough for me. Their solution was to order one of the van drivers to give me the ones he was wearing, which turned out to be quite smelly. Then, they wanted me to look older so I was kitted out with some comical facial hair that was stuck to my face using some sort of industrial glue. I had a few issues at lunch when I lost various bits of rice into my beard, however, these proved tasty mid-afternoon snacks later in the day.

Only joking, they weren’t tasty.

The Daxing Watermelon Festival

Finally, on Monday I was invited to take part in some “activities” in Daxing. I had no idea what these involved but as usual curiosity eclipsed any uncertainties in my mind so I agreed.

It turned out myself and an American who teaches part time at BIGC were going to be used as propaganda….I mean publicity….for the upcoming Watermelon Festival, which Daxing is famous for. Therefore, the local government wanted to take photos of Westerners at Daxing’s attractions living “in harmony” with the local Chinese. What a silly concept.

Firstly, we were taken to a watermelon farm where they took hundreds of photos of us picking the fruit, after which we were carted off to the Wildlife Park. There, we were given the red carpet treatment as we were whisked around all the main attractions in a cage on the back of a small lorry. They had a quite impressive selection of animals including bears, tigers, lions and giraffes. I was amused to learn the Chinese word for giraffe, which literally means, “long neck deer”. Sometimes the Chinese language is great. Just say what you see, a deer with a long neck.

Anyway, that’s enough of this week’s ramblings. I am currently trying to eat my way through a flat full of watermelons. I hope you are well. Keep the news coming as I am always keen to hear what’s going on back home.

Zou le (I’m leaving –a Chinese farewell that again frankly states the obvious)

See also Lao Beijing Blog