Ethan Robertson: Chinese TV sensation Part 1

The picture you see above requires a bit of explanation. It all started when I received a text from my program director here at CET. It said, "There is this English-Chinese translation competition TV show coming up, do you want to be a judge?" I have never replied to a text faster in my whole life, "Yes, I came to China to be on TV. I am so incredibly in."

That was on a Sunday, and I spent the rest of that week wondering exactly what would happen. You see, there are certain things a foreigner must realize if they have agreed to go on Chinese television. First of all, you must accept the Chinese view of foreigners is that we are like cute puppies lost in their country. They want to help us, but they also want some entertainment out of us. There is really is no malice in this, but the result of this is that most foreigners on TV are made to wear a Mao costume, or asked to sing a Bruce Springsteen song. This is what was floating through my mind throughout the week before. As it turned out, it was much worse than that.

I was at work on Friday afternoon, when I opened an email from my program director. I was expecting directions on how to get to the TV studio, but instead I got a bit of a game changer. The kind of game changer that makes you want to throw up.  Here is the important part.

"Ethan, William, and Alex, my friend Shen-ying will email you shortly with specifics on Sunday's TV show. As I told you before, you would be contestants not judges as you originally agreed to. You are under no obligation to participate whatsoever..."

I just sat at my desk, trying not to fold over due to the stomach cramp I had instantly developed. Being a judge is one thing. A judge has instant respect and credibility. I could just mess around if I was a judge. But being a contestant is a whole other world of possible embarrassment.

It really only got worse from there. As if I wasn't nervous enough, I received a phone call at 7:51 AM the next from "Bill" of the Shanghai Association of Interpreters who wanted to explain to me the contests rules and format. Let me start by asking this, what kind of serial killer calls someone, let alone a 21 year-old, at 7:51 on a Saturday morning? That is just criminal. I listened groggily as Bill outlined the day. 

The contest would have three rounds. In the first round, the challenger (that would be me) will have the opportunity to pick two of the people in stage with which to compete. The picture at the top of the page gives you an idea of what I mean. The three contestants would listen to a twenty second clip. This clip could either be English or Chinese, and then we were to translate it into the other language.

Round two consists of a actual interpreting. That means sitting between a Canadian and a Chinese man as they discuss a possible business deal, translating for one, and then the other. This is actually a little easier than the first section, to be honest.

Round three is the same format, except this time it is a man with a Pakistani accent and a Chinese man with a strong north China accent. This is slightly more difficult.

Just as I was about to hang up with Bill, he said one last thing that nearly made me poop my pants.

"There is also a talent portion of the competition. Please prepare a three minute performance that will be shown before the competition. If you think you are funny, perhaps you could prepare some stand-up comedy!" 

Sorry, Bill, could you run that by me again? That's right, 24 hours before I am to participate in this tragedy, I am told that I have to prepare a "talent." Oh joy...

I wasn't getting back to sleep after I heard that, so I got up and proceeded to waste about four hours watching YouTube videos while getting over a headache. Eventually, however, I had to face the reality that I had less than a day to figure out what to do for three minutes on stage. I began to brainstorm, but I quickly realized that I had no good ideas.

I lay in bed feeling bad for myself until my roommate came home. Seeing my distress, he came up with the idea that I should read a few poems on stage. It was like a ray of light came down from on high. Thank you, you wonderful little Buddha of a roommate. I set about finding my two poems. The ones I landed on were by Li Bai, arguably China's most famous poet, and they were some of his most famous poems. They can be seen here and here. Having read them, you will probably understand when I tell you that these are basically children's poems. I was used to memorizing 5 minute presentations every week back in Beijing, so I didn't worry too much about it. That may have been a mistake...

Update from Shanghai

I am taking a break from writing about the adventures of Karen and Steve in the far east to give everybody an update on my time in Shanghai. As most of you know, I started my internship at China Economic Review on June 17. I essentially have a full-time job, as I am at work, or in transit, from 8:00 to 7:00 Monday through Friday. On Wednesdays I leave work early to do two hours of one-on-one Chinese instruction. That is why I haven't been able to keep up with the blog, but I am getting better at managing my time. Enough complaining, I ought to mention that I love it here.  Shanghai has the one thing that Beijing lacks, a metropolitan atmosphere. I am also lucky enough to say that I have made some good friends among my new classmates.  Even more importantly, I absolutely love my new roommate. He is a rather rotund 31 year-old finance grad student from Hunan.  I call him 爸爸佛, father buddha, for his box like frame and tendency to try and look after me. Getting to know him has been great. As much as I complained about my busy schedule, I am enjoying my internship. So far I have only been writing daily briefs and short reports for CER's sister website, CERMBA, a website about business school news. That isn't very interesting, but I am currently research a story comparing the current Chinese car market with the early 20th century American market. I know most of you just got a glazed look on your face upon reading that, but it is a concept that I have been thinking about for months. I have interview with a renowned automotive historian tomorrow, and then the fun really starts. I also pitched a story about the difficulties of teaching English in China (I suggest everyone look it up, because it is fascinating). I will find out about that one soon. As of know, I am really enjoying my time here, and it will only get better as I get more comfortable at my internship. I will have another update soon, and this one could be my interesting post yet.

王府井和秀水市场 Wangfujing and the Silk Market

I decided my parents needed a little taste of Chinese consumerism, so for this day we went to the Wangfujing shopping street, and Beijing's world famous silk market.  Wangfujing is located, as one might expect, at the Wangfujing subway stop.  Wangfujing road itself is a combination of Western and Chinese shopping.  It has tea shops, Chinese restaurants (or, if you're from here, I suppose you just call it a restaurant), and traditional Chinese snack stores.  In between those, however, are Western jewelry stores, clothing outlets and fast food.  About half way down the road you will find the 小吃街, the traditional Chinese snack street, branching off to your left.  Here you can find all the exotic food your foreign self would expect to find in China.  Including, but not limited to; snake meat on a stick, scorpion on a stick (both large and small), squid on a stick, silk worm pupa on a stick, and seahorse, on a stick, of course.  Walking down the street is to be verbally assaulted by a dozen people who speak enough English to yell, "Lady!", or "Mister!" as they try to get you to buy their wares.  I don't blame them at all, but it is a bit overwhelming.  I use the word "wares" because their products extend from remote control helicopters, to lighters, to Beijing duck cooking kits, to wallets, and on, and on, and on.  It is a nearly endless sea of trinkets.  If you walk across Wangfujing road, however, you will find something else entire.  You won't find any cheap lighters with Mao on them, instead you have Hugo Boss, Armani, Burberry, Gucci, Juicy Couture, and even a BMW "Lifestyle Store".  In other words, it is every luxury brand under the sun, plus Nike.  It is a monument to western consumerism on a scale I have never seen.  It truly is a cliche by this point, but the dichotomy between that mall and the old snack street across the street is absolutely fascinating.  I briefly considered buying a pair of shoes from Ecco, then I realized that they were nearly $400 thanks to China's luxury tax.  I passed on those.

Our next stop was, once again, somewhat of a mix of the old and new.  The 秀水市场, Beijing's famous silk market, is home to a knock-off version of anything you can imagine.  All the yelling of "Lady!" and "Mister!" are turned up to 11 once you enter the aisles of the silk market.  The quality of the fakes varies widely.  I've seen Polo shirts and Luis Vuitton purses that look exactly like the real things, but I have also seen stuff that's not even close.  Take, for example, the “Ferrari" merchandise that is available (Or "Forreri”, as I have seen it spelled).  The traditional prancing horse symbol of my favorite car company has been slapped on pretty much anything, and the method here is "the more the merrier."  Even better, the horse is often replaced with what is best described as a reindeer.  Wandering around with my parents was an interesting experience, as the three of us were prime targets for all the shop owners.  Each floor sells something different, and there are about 7 floors.  It is, in the words of Karen, "Overwhelming."  I managed to do a little bit of bargaining, much to the pleasure of my father's wallet.  If you take the first price you are offered at one of these stores, you are a fool.  These people aren't out to rip you off, they just want to make all the money they can.  I got myself of the nice polos, and a new pair of Nikes.  Karen bought herself a jade turtle from "Cathy's Jade."  That was an interesting experience, as I was caught between my nervous mother and a kind, but overly enthusiastic "Cathy."  In the end, we got our turtle.  I will end by saying that my dad described the experience as "American consumerism on steroids."

奥运会公园 和北京教育学院The Olympic Park and the Beijing Institute of Education

After the "adventure" on the Great Wall, we chose a safer plan for Wednesday, the Olympic Park.  This time only my friend Nick could make it, no Chunsen today.  We took the subway to reach the park, which was as smooth and uneventful as I have come to expect Beijing subway travel to be.  We arrived at the park in pretty much the same weather we had come to expect over the past 5 days, overcast and rainy.  Even in this less than flattering circumstance, the Olympic Park was a just as impressive as I had imagined it would be.  You're first faced with the prospect of crossing a massive open area that leads to and separates the Water Cube and Bird's Nest.

This one if from my series of picture I call, "Karen doesn't know I took this."

The series continues

This one is one of my favorites. Also, behold the Bird's Nest!

The two red things are the Olympic mascots from 2008.  

 The Bird's Nest did not disappoint.  This was especially true for me.  As a runner, this place is holy ground.  I took my sweet time walking around and identifying the start lines for the 800m, the 1600m, the 5000m, and even Usain Bolt's famous world record 100m.

This picture is going to get treasured for a long time.

 A little background is needed for the picture above.  I have noticed a rather strange phenomenon during my time in China; Chinese people love to take pictures of themselves with pictures of the very place they are already visiting.  Did you get a picture in front of the Water Cube already?  Great!  Now go inside and take another picture with a big picture of the real thing you just took a picture with!  I love China.

Clearly, this is an Olympic Torch

All my pictures of the Water Cube (or the Michael Phelps Memorial Swimming Pool, as we called it) are on my parents camera, but I have these interior shots.  Honestly, it looks a lot smaller than you'd expect, but it does have a water park!  But I don't have pictures of it...

There was an international water polo tournament going on.  I'm pretty sure the Chinese won.

The picture above the diving board are an advertisement for a Chinese singing competition.  See, China isn't so different from us after all.

After touring the sites and scenes of the Olympic Park, I chose to take my parents a little closer to home for the afternoon.  As such, we boarded the subway and headed to Beijing Institute of Education, where I spent the last four 120 days studying Chinese Monday through Sunday.

But first, on my mother's insistence, I took us to the pet street, as we called it.  On this 100 ft section of alley, you could buy everything from a snapping turtle, to a squirrel, and I do mean a real squirrel.  There were also cats, dogs, birds, fish, snakes, crabs, shrimp, and even giant crickets.  As I knew would happen, my mother found the whole thing very upsetting.  I can't say I disagree, as the conditions for most animals were hardly more than wire cages.

With that over, we walked the remaining kilometer to my campus.  Well, you could call it a campus, if you really wanted to, but it all fit into about 3/4 of a football field, and is fenced all around.  I failed to take any pictures of the campus with my iPhone, so those will have to wait.  I do, however, have pictures of the famous places around my campus.

This would be the small store where I bought water, snacks, and the occasion 50 cent bottle of beer.  It is owned by a couple who live inside with their 7 year old daughter.  She was the cutest girl ever, and she spoke way better Chinese than me. 

This where I got my breakfast on most mornings.  I never got tired of watching this guy make those pastries you see him cooking.  It was an art.

Here at the world famous eggplant restaurant, I would eat probably 4 times week.  The waitress reminded me of my mom, and the food was amazing.

If you go out the gate of BIE, and swing a left, you will eventually run into this side street.  Here, you can find the Muslim restaurant I ate at probably 50 times, and a guy who sells duck necks, which I never ate.

 The tour was a nice chance to show my parents what I had been talking about for the last four months.  I even showed them my old room and the classrooms where I spent endless hours learning to speak Chinese at a three year-old's level.  It was a very cathartic experience.  I said goodbye to the breakfast pastry guy, the owner of the store, and even the guy at the desk in my dorm.  It was a nice way to wrap up the day, and my time at CET Beijing.  That night, we headed back to the hotel, and hit the hay.  The next day, we would be eating hot pot!

父母在长城上 in Which my Mother is "Struck by Lightning"

Ok, we're back.  I know, it's been way too long, but there is much to talk about.  I'll start where we left off.  Tuesday morning we met my friends, one American and one Chinese, at a bus stop.  This gave my parents a chance to experience Beijing morning traffic.  My father was not overly impressed, and kept repeating that New York traffic was far worse.  That just made me thankful we weren't in New York.  We reached the stop around 10:00, and hopped on the bus, prepared for a 50 minute ride to the Badaling section of the Great Wall.  The ride proceeded without problems until about 10:30, when the sky suddenly started to get dark.  This was not your average "oh, it's going to storm" kind of dark.  This was a combination of air pollution and fog that made it appears as though we were going through a sort of pea soup.  Cars had to turn on their headlights, it was that dark.

This is what 11:00 AM looks like when you have rain and pollution.

As the bus waded through the toxic soup, my Chinese friend explained to me that this phenomenon is not uncommon in Beijing around July, but he had never seen it happen this early in June.  Oh, lucky us.  By the time we reached the wall it was spitting rain, so we were forced to buy some thin plastic ponchos.  Due to the less than ideal weather, we chose to take the cable car to the wall, forgoing the walk to the top.  Because this is China, however, the "cable cars" were actually individual open-top cars, with molded seats.

Only the most luxurious accommodations here at Badling.

Departure is a less than graceful affair.

In addition to offering no protection from the rain, we also encountered a phenomenon in which, due to the steepness of our ascent, all the water that collected in the foot wells quickly found its way into the back part of our little death traps, thereby soaking our butts with water.  Good times...

The face of terror....and a wet butt.

Once we reached the top we realized that the weather was not going to get any better.  The view from the wall looked like this.

Behold, China in all its beauty!

We quickly resolved to make the best of the trip.  We took what pictures we could, including some with Chinese tourists, who very much like to take pictures with foreigners.

This jolly outlook lasted till right about the time the sky started falling.  When we reached the end of the wall, about a 20 minute walk, the sky darkened, and it started raining cats and dogs. This was accompanied by some rather fierce lightning.  By the time we got to the cable cars (real ones this time) at the end of that section of wall, we determined that riding in metal boxes during a lightning storm was a poor idea, especially ones that are higher than everything around them.  By the time we decided to go back down in the butt soaking cars, it had started to hail.  I knew it had started hailing because I heard my mother's loud declarations of "Ow!" every couple of seconds.  I, of course, was appropriately stoic.  This wasn't your normal just-this-side-of-snow kind of hail, this hail was about the size of a big marble, and almost as hard.  I soon found out that my friend Chunsen had never seen hail before in his whole life.  Speaking of Chunsen, he advised me to turn off my phone, as it might lead to me getting struck by lightning.  Of course, this was said while he, all 6'2" of him, was holding an umbrella while walking on the tallest part of the wall.  To each his own.  We quickly sought refuge in the towers that are placed throughout the wall.  As we entered, lightning struck what couldn't have been more than 200 meters from us, causing Chunsen to look like he was going to soil his pants.  

We were far from alone.

My friends, Nick and Chunsen, soon after Chunsen saw his life flash before his eyes.

Not the sunny picture on the Great Wall that I was hoping to take, but it will do.

My mother also insists that she felt a strong electrical shock come through her hand as it rested on the tower wall.  She said it felt like sticking her hand in an outlet.  I tend to believe her, thought the whole "struck by lightning" thing is bit of an exaggeration.  Once we determined that the hail had stopped, and the rain wasn't going to, we started walking back to the butt soaking cars.  This trip was extended by the fact that we passed by them on our first attempt, briefly leading us to believe that we had trapped on the Great Wall in a lightning storm.  Thankfully (I guess?) we finally found our way back the station.  The way down was even more terrifying than the way up, because the only thing keeping our train of cars, about twenty in all, from careening down the mountain side was a single man with hand brakes, brakes that I could smell overheating on the way down.  

Once we reached the bottom, we took the pictures you see above, mostly to celebrate the fact that we are still alive.  I can't say that it was as pretty as the other two times I went to the Wall, but it was definitely more interesting.  As my mother said, most peoples trips to the Great Wall aren't nearly as exciting.

That night, after a long, wet bus ride home, we returned to the hotel and then met my friends for dinner.  We went to a place called Heaven Supermarket, which is actually a bar and liquor store that also sells Mexican food.  It is especially attractive to me because of its abundant and relatively cheap supply of imported beer.  Not to mention the Bentley dealership right across the street.

My friends, Chunsen and Donni, complete with Bentley dealership in the background.

It was a much more relaxing experience than the wall, to be sure.  That night, we returned to the hotel for a nightcap in the bar.  I decided I needed a change of pace, so I decided to forgo the scotch from the night before in favor of a nice Mai Tai.

Not the manliest choice, but, hey, I earned it.

 

父母来了

Here it is, the much anticipated update of the misadventures of Karen and Steve.  I'll break the tension now by saying that the trip has been fantastic so far.  The arrival itself was happily uneventful, with the appropriate flowers from me, and crying from my mother.  We arrived at the hotel to find it more than good enough for the likes of me.  My mother, as you can imagine, could be heard saying over and over again, "This is just too nice." but she enjoyed it nonetheless.  The first night we went to Qianmen, or, rather, I dragged them, as they were pretty exhausted from twenty hours of travel.  I think the sight of Tiananmen did a good job of waking them up.

As my mom put it, "We're really here!"

Anybody else never imagine my parents standing in Tiananmen Square?

 That night we met my friends in Qianmen for dinner, an affair that involved a table with our own small skillet on which we grilled vegetables and meat.  It was a great introduction to the kind of authentic Chinese food I have been enjoying for the past four months.  They also got an introduction to the kind of public restrooms that China has to offer.  I'm not sure what my mom faced when I walked her to the bathroom, but I know that when my dad and I went next door, we were faced with a tattooed Chinese man squatting over a whole and smoking.  This didn't phase me in the least, but I would pay good money for a picture of my dad's face when he saw it.  Needless to say, they have been avoiding them ever since.

After sleeping in, a much needed treat, we headed for the National Museum on Sunday.  Occupying one whole side of Tiananmen square, it is the largest in the world.  I think my parents were appropriately impressed by the 100 ft high main hall.  We made our way through the exhibition on Chinese history, with everybody picking their own favorites.  I was partial to the beautifully wrought seals, as I was the first time I went in February, while my mother enjoyed the pottery.  Steve, for his part, liked it all, but commented, unsurprisingly I might add, that  "I just don't do replicas."  As if a replica of a 60,000 year old skull was made meaningless by the presence of the word replica.  That's my dad, gotta love him.  Speaking of my dad, you might be wondering right now where all the great pictures of the museum have gone to.  Well, my dad definitely used the camera, but not quite as he intended.  Therefore, instead of pictures, we will have to make do with some shaky videos of the best China's National Museum has to offer.  Thankfully, I had my iPhone, so I took some photos of my own.

Steve Robertson, movie maker.

This girl was far more interested in them than the video on construction techniques.

I wish I could say he didn't continue to take videos when he wanted to take pictures, but I can't do that.  That afternoon we headed back to Qianmen to go shopping, where we discovered just how different my sense of style was from my father's.  To each his own.  

That night I insisted we feast on 北京烤鸭 (Beijing Duck), Beijing's most famous, and delicious, dish.  After a little bit of walking we finally found the place that was supposed to be across the street from our hotel.  I'm not sure what was more enjoyable, the duck, or watching my dad use chopsticks.  All joking aside, it has been great to have them here.  I didn't realize how much I missed them until they arrived.  This is only a taste of our adventures so far, stay tuned for more, including how my mother was struck by lightning on the Great Wall (she's fine).