IT’S HERE! LAOWAI STYLE IS OUT! CHECK OUT THE VIDEO!
After the amazing time I had making “Laowai Style” last week, putting it online and getting a chance to show my friends and family the result of my work was reward enough. But after I posted the video and sent out emails to my friends, something interesting happened.
The video took off!
When I went to dinner on Thursday, “Laowai Style” had 5,000 views on Youku, a site that is the rough equivalent of YouTube outside of China. I went to meet my friends for dinner, some of whom were in the video, grinning ear to ear. When I got back to my apartment, I was shocked. The number of viewers had quadrupled in only two hours, to 20,000 in total!
The video is about the life of a “laowai” in China, with Laowai being a foreigner. There’s some argument about whether the term is pejorative or not—generally, I just see it as what Chinese people decide to call foreigners when they think we don’t understand them… which comes with a complex package of meanings, some good, some bad.
It appeared as though my message really struck a chord with the Chinese. My goal had been to find lyrics that simultaneously dispelled some long-held stereotypes about laowai, such as we don’t need spoons to eat, because we can use chopsticks. But also, I wanted to draw attention to how we live the same lives many other young people do in modern China. I don’t drive a BMW, but rather a wimpy electric bike; I also, like Chinese people, cross the street without waiting for the light to turn green.
At around 4pm on Friday, the video broke 100,000 views, had 2,053 Thumbs Ups to 128 Thumbs Downs, and almost 400 user comments. As of the end of Saturday night, that number had doubled to 200,000.
People are saying things like:
“I laughed until I cried, too good!”
“I showed this to my dad and it killed him, too funny.”
“Everyone wants to come to Asia… cheaper than Europe, safer than Africa, more interesting than America.”
“How did I not see them when I was at the Bird’s Nest?”
“The little kids in the park were the best.”
“I like this, more of a humble type of American, trying to fit in with China.”
My Co-Workers at The Nature Conservancy caught Laowai Style fever too, and spread the word on the official TNC Microblog, saying: “This Friday afternoon we saw our former intern Jesse Appell’s “Laowai Style” video! Our blue-shirted friend spent his summer in Beijing with us last year. This year, he’s gotten a scholarship to come back to China and study humor and Xiangsheng!”
Perhaps best of all, though, my friend Ari Salinger also found that running the comments through Google translate yielded some gems as well:
“Ha ha ha hey foreigners to instant laugh urine ha ha ha”
“The amount of drops of God flash blind my eyes”
Regardless, I’m interested to see where this goes. I think that if I manage this right, I might be able to really push forward my comedy project quicker than I thought possible. I’ll be updating the blog on the press that that the video gets!