In the past few weeks, I’ve been getting calls from television stations around the country to do Laowai-Style related things—some of which I am doing and will post about soon! I had my first chance to visit with the people who make television here in China this afternoon. I went to visit a company called Enlight Media, which is one of the bigger media companies in China, and produces many of the shows that come out on Chinese TV. They also produce a lot of the content that is shown on subway cars here in China, so anyone used to riding the Beijing subway might have seen their work.
Today I was meeting with people from Anhui TV. Anhui is a province in central China, and they are hiring Enlight media to prepare a show for their local broadcast station. The show, “Can’t Stop Me Now”, is a talent show that features skilled performers who can sing, dance, or do magic, but they seemed to be willing to make an exception for me, who can do none of the above. They wanted to fly me to Hefei in Anhui for a day and promised to cover all my costs—not a bad deal, but as I am super busy with classes, I said we ought to discuss the show before I agreed to hop on a plane.
I entered Enlight’s Beijing offices, tucked behind a parking lot close enough to the Yonghegong Lama Temple that their air still smelled smoky with incense. All around me were rows and rows of Chinese people—almost entirely women—working at cluttered counters and making television happen. It was simultaneously glamorous and low-key, and the unusual architecture of the building separated it from many of the gridded offices I’d seen at other places in China.
It was worth trekking across town on a Thursday to meet with the people at the station, even if only to get valuable language practice on explaining why I’m here in China, the importance of learning Xiangsheng, and explaining what I was trying to do with Laowai Style. Still, in my meeting with Ms. Chen, I felt that there were some points of contention that reminded me that while television here is more than willing to have me work with them, they might not be as willing to work with me towards my goals—namely, furthering connections between China and the US through humor.
“I loved the lyrics to Laowai Style!” Ms. Chen told me. “If we were to broadcast it, though, would we be able to make some small changes?”
“What kind of changes?” I asked. I wondered if the phrase “the party” or “Chinese characteristics” might pop up somewhere.
Actually, it turned out to be a much more mundane dumbing down of my project. “We were thinking, instead of Laowai Style, we could change it to ‘China Style’ or ‘Beijing Style.’”
I smiled, and tried to explain the entire relevance of the video centered on the fact it was about how foreigners were living in China. Taking the “laowai” out of “laowai style” reduced the whole piece to a giant blob of mimicry.
Rather than being confrontational—a tactic to avoid at all costs in China—we agreed to both consider changes, which meant that neither of us would be considering anything.
Moving onto another topic, it came up that I had made more funny videos back in the US. Ms. Chen was very interested and asked me to send some more. “Let me see your funniest one!”
I though about which video I ought to send. Firstly, almost all were in English. I asked if this was a problem. “No problem!” Ms. Chen replied. But of course it was. I’ve spent enough time struggling to understand Chinese comedy to know ninety percent of my jokes would die in linguistic and cultural transit.
Secondly, I couldn’t think of another video I did that would be halfway as funny to Chinese people, who don’t know what Parkour is or appreciate Otto Von Bismarck rapping about The Federation of the Rhyme. “I don’t know if I have others that would fit a Chinese sense of humor,” I said.
“No problem there either! Just send what you have.”
I nodded, but I knew there was no hope for anything productive down that road. I foresaw a wasted ten minutes composing an email in my future.
In the end, I walked out of the building with a few name cards and a better idea of how China Central Television works with private media companies to produce content, which could one day be quite useful. But I still think there is a gap between what Chinese media thinks to put on their air left to their own devices and what I would do left to mine. Perhaps that’s an area I’ll look more into as the year goes on and I put together my own comedy team.