China Idol

-China Idol-

So for the previous few weeks Matt's friend Michelle or 'Loopy' as everyone calls her, has been trying to convince Matt and myself to attend this 'singing competition show' at the tv station she works at. Since the show tapes on Saturday nights, Matt and I were usually too tired from the 9 hours of playing Simon Says and teaching the letter "T" to attend. But two Saturdays ago, the stars must have been aligned, because for whatever reason we decided on a whim to go at the last minute.

After pounding a couple of beers (* upon request from my mother, I promised not talk about alcohol so much in the blogs. So from here on out I will refer to drinking as "playing with puppies.") After playing with 5 or 6 puppies a piece in the parking lot of the tv station, Loopy informed Matt and myself that we needed to go inside and take our seats. As it turned out we were seated at the very end of the front row of a packed house of 400 avid fans. Seeing our white faces, the producer came over and introduced himself to us. Following our conversation, he promptly made some random Chinese dude switch seats with us so we could sit directly behind the judges (random cultural tidbit* aside from the huge cities like Shanghai and Beijing which are full of foreigners, most of china remains extremely racially homogenous. (here in Jiaxing, a city of 3 million, there are probably no more than a 100 non-Chinese people living here). As a result of limited to no direct contact with foreigners, the typical Chinese person forms their opinion of white people through the movies they see and the tv shows they watch. As a result, it creates for almost like a ‘reverse’ prejudice. People here treat us like we’re celebrities. It’s wonderful. On several occasions when i‘ve had to wait in-line at a checkout counter one of the clerks have opened up a new register just to serve me.) So, after our re-seating I ended up sitting no more than 4 feet from one of the judges. Our close proximity to Paula-ming, Randy-chung, and Simon-shao meant that we were on tv every time they were taping the judges.
The show began promptly at about 7 pm and was executed extremely professionally. As it turned out, Matt and I were at the finals, so there was a lot of ‘drama.’ The show itself was absolutely ridiculous, and what was even more absurd was how serious everyone else in the audience took this ridiculous show. On one occasion, one contestant was kicked off the show, and the girl judge began crying. Naturally, Matt and I thought that it was hysterical. Then we looked behind us, and to our astonishment an entire row of homely looking teenage girls (honestly I’ve seen maybe 10 overweight girls in china, of who at least 6 of them were sitting together in that row) sobbing. It was too much. Matt and I were falling out of our seats laughing. Of course, since the producer had us sitting practically next to the judges, we were shown on tv laughing hysterically during the most somber parts of the show (the producer must have really hated us).
Another highlight of the show was the incorporation of interpretive dancers. Every singing performance was accompanied by an interpretive dancer. These dancers were all girls who, because they watched MTV asia and dressed like they were homeless, fancied themselves to be some kind of hip-hop performers. One dancer, who matt called hoopz for her gold hula-hoop sized earrings, would always incorporate the robot into her interpretive dances. It was so funny. it was off the charts on the unintentional comedy scale.
Another amusing aspect of the show was when the audience would try to clap along to the beat of the performances. I didn’t realize it until I got here, but chinese people have NO sense of rhythm. When one of the producers would want the audience to start clapping, he would stand in the front and try to set the tempo. Not only was the original tempo off the beat of the song, but a lot of the people couldn’t even follow the incorrect tempo set by the producer. This resulted in a general cacophony of out of beat clapping.
The real highlight of the night came early on after the contestants performed their first round of songs. After having paid attention to a tv program of which I understood nothing for nearly an hour, I began feeling a little antsy. So, when a pretty cute chinese girl took the stage, I asked Matt how to say “I love you” in Chinese. After her song was over, I began hollering in my best obnoxious American frat-boy chanting voice “Wooo I nee! Wo I neee.” She blushed, and then in English said ‘thank you.’ It was great. In china, it is customary to receive flowers after performances. So, loopy turned to me and asked me if I wanted to be the guy that ran up and gave her flowers. Having played with so many puppies earlier I was still a little inebriated (though quickly sobering up), I said, “sure,” and before I knew what was going on Loopy was pushing a bouquet of flowers into me telling me to run up on stage. Like a dog being told to go outside of his invisible fence I hesitated for a second. But before I knew it my legs had carried me up on stage under the bright lights. Normally the position of ‘flower-boy’ is reserved for some studio troll whose sole mission is to deliver the flowers as hastily as he can, and be as invisible as possible. I realized this only after watching several flowers boys later on in the show.
Rather than passing off the flowers and scurrying back off stage, I walked up to her and handed her the flowers and kind of stood there for a second expecting something to happen. After a moment of internal debate, I did something that was totally not appropriate in the least- I leaned in and gave her a hug, and then kissed her on the cheek. The whole audience erupted in a “OooooooOoo!” Upon hearing the audience Ooooo, I retreated to my seat, nearly slipping on a puddle of water that was left on stage.
All in all, the contest was a lot of fun. My girlfriend ended up coming in second place (she was robbed!!). Also, unbeknownst to matt and myself, apparently this show is a big deal locally. So a lot of our students at the school told us that they saw us on tv.

Anyway, I need to go eat dinner now. I have a bunch of pictures from the night, including pictures of me up on stage, but i am having trouble posting them. I will be sure to post them sometime in the future. Expect the next entry this time next week. Thanks for reading!