Made in China: Marketing my exotic American nature in the Middle Kingdom
Did I ever tell you about the time I was a male model selling cars in China? I’ve got the pictures to prove it. Or how about the time I was on Chinese TV donating money to the Sichuan earthquake relief effort? And then just before the Olympics there was that bus company in Qinhuangdao who wanted to record my voice reading off bus stops in English – oh! – and let’s not forget when I was asked to write for a Chinese magazine ... in Chinese.
Wholly unimpressive yet true stories.
Just today, even I got an e-mail inviting me to come on a Chinese television show called Tian Tian Xiang Shang, a talk show slash variety show.
I suppose my university was contacted by their PR people and was asked to produce some foreigners – Americans to be specific – who were able to speak some Chinese. But I’m not flattered.
Why?
Because I can already taste catastrophe. My guess is that the true purpose of the invite is to rein in some daring foreign guests and then clobber ‘em with Mandarin. The show really wants to invite us on and ridicule us, nothing else, show us off like carnival freaks. Look mommy, the monkeys can talk! But that’s another story really. Call my cataclysmic portents cynical if you like ... .
Still, what got me thinking was this though – this would have been, like, my nth time working as some sort of “foreign personality” (not mentioning my stint as a government certified “foreign expert” professor of English). Hence this question remains: just where are these opportunities for mild and fleeting stardom coming from?
It’s not like I’m the only one either. I know lots of folks here who’ve done this sort of thing. My Spanish friend posed for Chinese tuxedo ads. My Kazakh friend somewhat regularly has photo shoots for fashion lines. A British friend was asked to record for English learning tapes – the list goes on. Ask just about anyone who has lived in China, and at the very least they’ll tell you that at Tiananmen Square Chinese tourists were just as interested in photographing them as they were Mao’s portrait.
Thing is, we didn’t always have people wanting our images and voices. But by moving to China, all of a sudden we are some kind of rare commodity, and after learning some Chinese and getting some connections, these opportunities build up, little by little. And then one day, you aren’t surprised when someone wants you to be on Chinese TV.
In China, most times, foreign equals alien, but sometimes it can also mean exotic and cool. With any luck, one might circumvent the headaches and learn how to cash in on one’s cache of panache, as foreign can also encompass mystique and mystery.
Thus, here my cynical side is sliced wide open by optimism and opportunity. For this realization makes me wonder, what are my prospects?
What if, next Sunday, the day I’ve been offered a chance to appear on Chinese TV, the day that show expects to make a laughing stock out of me and my classmates, we were instead to open our monkey mouths and vomit forth fluent Mandarin, wowing the crowd, winning over the hearts of a nation? Ridiculous, I know. It is impossible. We are completely incompetent baboons, but ... what if?
The truth is the opportunity is there! The outlet is there, if only I were more capable! For it is possible that next Sunday someone big might be watching TV and upon seeing my boyish good-looks and crooked grin they might just think, “That kid’s got spunk; that kid’s got moxie. Get his number! Let’s put him in an ad! Let’s make him an extra in our next movie! I don’t doubt he’d like more money!”
Along similar lines, what if without fluent Mandarin I still appeared on TV next weekend and made everyone laugh by massacring sacred Mandarin, and after the show, backstage, in some dimly lit, smoky greenroom the beautiful hostess takes me aside, looks deep into my round brown eyes and says, “You know what? You weren’t that crap. Maybe you want to come back on the show sometime?”
I’m dreaming, but I’m not crazy. It has happened before.
For, once there was a Canadian named Mark Rowswell, better known now as Da Shan (大山) – translation, “Big Mountain.” Like me, he attended Peking University. But unlike me, his Chinese was very, very good. In 1988, he got invited to perform at the much watched CCTV New Year’s Gala where he killed China with his verbal skills. Now he is a household name and official “friend of China” who makes tons of money through endorsements and television programs, but is virtually next to unknown in the West. He is also my sole role model (besides Bear Grylls).
Bottom line: Germany’s Alphaville told us all about being Big in Japan and now the legend of Da Shan shows us how to get made in China, for luck and chance are both made. Almost as if with no talent, latent or otherwise, a lucky foreigner in China can reign – China has the power to make a mouse famous, a rat a star. And what is a star? A star is but a celestial body, or a celebrity who was once a nobody, really, just someone who one day chased an itty-bitty opportunity and just for a bit danced to fortune’s tune.
So, don’t turn that dial, kids, tune in next time, and find out if dull Philip can become a Chinese idol, for, in China, fortunate foreigners possessing few, if any, innate abilities are made celebrities with celerity.
