Journal Entries - TV Show

Week 3 and 4
Journal Entry 1
For the last assignment, I talked a lot about the gap between when school starts and when most of my classes start. For these entries, I am going to focus on getting used to the classes and how I was received in the classes.
The one class that actually started during the first week was one called “Modern and Contemporary Chinese Political Systems and Thought Research.” I had wanted to go to this class and another class at the same time, but I talked with Lauren, a University of Oregon student, and she said she would go to the diplomacy class and I could go to the other class. We reported to each other on our classes after the end of each of them.
Earle came with me to the class. I think he was in over his head, but I kept treading water. This teacher was interesting, and he spoke clearly though quickly. He is talking about a different topic related to Chinese government every week, and our only assignment is to read a book and do an hour long presentation on it with another student. Ten out of the twelve books he gave us were originally written in English, so I just found a copy of one of them in the philosophy library in the original. Not too shabby.


Journal Entry 2
So, the next few entries will be on this experience with the television show.
We had just had some activity coordinated by the Flagship program. I had to meet up with some of my friends who had come from Germany, and my bike was messed up. I went to the bike repair guy at the University’s north gate. The guy was fixing my tire, and I was talking with this guy about China and how corrupt things were.
He first asked if Western media had something against Chinese people. I didn’t really think American media had anything against Chinese people, but they thought that the Chinese government was pretty cruel. He said that that was true, but it was also necessary to maintain a cruel government so that China’s problems, like corruption. I pointed out that China’s corruption was getting better and not worse since the 1970’s. He was surprised I realized this and thought that I was very clever to have seen this. I told him that I am not clever, and it is something that anyone could have known.
At this point of our conversation, it just so happened that two ladies from one of the Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation were driving by, and they saw me. They were looking for some foreigners to do a gameshow in next Sunday and I told them that I could do it.

Journal Entry 3
Later, I went to talk with some of the representatives about the meeting. I was waiting for them down in the lobby of the main building of the Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation. While I was waiting for them in the giant lobby, I noticed something that helped me understand the Chinese media. There were people moving about in the fairly empty lobby. There was a Starbucks, a fancy bakery and a bank all on the first floor of this building, surprising considering that people from outside did not generally come in. But, the most interesting thing was the way you had to get in the rest of the building. You had to walk through a small turnstile to get to the elevator. Next to that elevator was a PLA officer standing on a wide, circular metal stool. To me, he felt like he was out of place, but the other people moving in and out of the turnstile, women in pretty, knee-length skirts that looked like something out of the Sears catalogue and men in dry-cleaned suits, did not seem to think anything was strange.
I mentioned this experience to some Chinese people. They tried to offer other explanations, but no of them really seemed to hold water. One person said that may the PLA officer was perhaps the reason he had been placed there was to protect from a terrorist attack or some sort of robbery. Of course, it would be impossible for him to do anything in the event of a terrorist attack, since there was only one person and he only had a pistol.
I have concluded that the PLA officer was put there just to embody the Party’s control over the media, that he was an actual symbol of their power, stuck in the middle of this Westernized media operation and this lobby filled to the brim with the symbols of American capitalism like Starbucks to make sure the people walking through the turnstile never forgot who was really in charge.

Journal Entry 4
The day of the filming of the television show was Sunday. I had to show up at ten thirty in the morning to start preparing for the show at that evening at eight thirty. We meet in the VIP room and were talking about the content of the program. We had meet on the Wednesday to discuss these topics. I thought we had already worked this out. Why were we doing this again? Wednesday, they had asked me if I could do anything special like sing a Chinese song or do a Chinese tongue twister. I told them I can’t do English tongue twisters, much less Chinese, so we agreed to do a Chinese song, “我的中国心.”
But the day of the show, the director who had wanted me to do the tongue twister before asked me again if I could do it. I said know, but he asked me to say it out loud, just to see whether I could actually do it. Then, he said when the host was interviewing me he was going to ask me a question about what I liked about China. I was supposed to say that I liked Sichuan dishes, and then I was supposed to list them off. Finally the host was supposed to ask me what dish I could cook, and I was supposed to say “西红柿炒鸡蛋.” It was the directors idea of a joke. Not funny.
The host also didn’t find it funny, because he totally ignored him. But the host did ask me if I try and do a tongue twister. He said one line and I repeated it after him. That was fun.
I was left wondering whether this was like the production of an American television show and why they kept insisting I do a tongue twister. In the end, I realized that a lot of the stuff going on in this TV show was not something that was well planned out, but it happened more organically.

Journal Entry 5
After thinking about why they wanted me to say the Chinese tongue twister, I realized pretty quickly that it was about Chinese pumping themselves up about their own self image. At the start of the program, the host talked about the topic of how now a lot of foreigners were coming to China to study the Chinese in nationalistic terms, and how that was connected with the increasing importance of China in the world.
I think one of the reasons they insisted that I do the tongue twister because directors and the host wanted emphasize how foreigners are learning Chinese at a very high level, and that was supposed to show the audience that China (and Nanjing to a certain degree) has attained an important place in the world. I also think that it is related to the tributary system, where the importance of the emperor was confirmed by the amount of foreigners who would come to pay tribute to the emperor. The more foreigners you could bring and the more foreign they were, the more powerful you were. Discussions on the Tang Dynasty often emphasize who many foreigners were living in Chang’an. I think we were viewed by the Chinese in these terms, particularly since half of the players were black, particularly foreign to Chinese.



Journal Entry 6
As for classes, one of the most interesting (and frustrating) problems I have had since classes started is that one of my class’ schedules changed. Originally, my class on Chinese minorities was originally supposed to be taught by two different teachers, one teaching the first part of the semester and the other teaching in the second half of the smester, each teaching on Tuesday night.
But apparently, they changed the schedule after they printed out the schedule we have in the Flagship Office. Now, both teachers are teaching the class in the first half of the semester, one teaching it in the original Tuesday night time slot and the other taking a Monday night time slot. Fortunately, I did not have a class during that period, but it was kind of a pain that no one had told me. They had told the other American in the class when he signed up for classes (he’s a regular graduate student).
It’s not a big deal, but I was a little annoyed and surprised that they were just able to change the time. Of course, it makes sense, everybody in that class should all have the same classes. But then, I guess because they did not really know what I was doing there, what role I played in their class, so they did not really know that I was also supposed to come to that other part of the class.