I've been watching a bit more Chinese TV as of late (both because I'm trying to spend more time with Nancy/listening to Chinese... and I'm just about out of new shows to download right now). In spite of the impossibly high language barrier to entry, enjoyment can be found by even a language-deaf foreigner like me... mostly by MST3K'ing these shows to myself as I watch them. And believe me, specifics of the dialogues aside, there's plenty to mock about Chinese TV...
Commercials
There's just so much to love/give you an aneurysm about Chinese commercials. Chalk it up to my jaded, savvy American mind, but they're just ridiculous. They promise ridiculous things, and paint ridiculous scenarios. They're American commercials before people realized that commercials are total BS.
Toothpaste is not only cause to throw a pool party, but turns you into a retarded manga cartoon. Every single product, including diarrhea medicine has its own cutesy, cartoon spokesthing. Beer still has the power to grant wishes... just by pouring it.
Not to mention that apparently somewhere along the chain of command, someone has made the decision that it's best to buy as many time slots as is humanly possible. In any one commercial break there are no less than 3 repeats of the exact same commercial advertising laxative tea to the elderly. When I go on the subway, no lie, every 3 and a half minutes comes on a commercial featuring a woman riding a donkey (it sounds kinkier than it is), and advertising for Ganji, an EBay clone shopping site. Added to that is the fact that each time she starts the commercial by screaming the name of the company as loud as possible. It's is because of Ganji that I bought a new pair of headphones... but unfortunately for them, not from them.
Oh yeah. And every. God. Damned. Thing. Rhymes.
Everything
Forever
And ever
Amen.
Reality Shows
China seems obsessed with reality shows... but not as we know them. It's not a Survivor clone, nor Who Wants to Be a Millionaire that seems to be everywhere (though they do exist)... but rather these banal, boring versions of Jerry Springer or the Maury Povich show.
Imagine Jerry Springer if there were no transvestite baby-daddies, cross-dressing trucker hookers, or midget porn stars. Now imagine That Jerry's final thought was the entire second half of the show, and was in fact a lecture complete with podium to the audience about whatever evil happened to be the topic of the day (today's appears to be "not beating your gal on the side who's mother of your 3 illegitimate children"). And imagine Jerry isn't Jerry, but a portly, middle-aged Chinese woman with a voice like raking gravel and a face that makes you think Mao didn't look so bad. Sternly lecturing her audience and everyone else. How does this get a show?!
Other than that, there are the near ubiquitous dating shows. Great, thinks you, Joe McForeignviewer, something along the lines of Blind Date or, hell, even Next. Nope. Instead, men are brought out one by one like the condemned brought before the firing squad... the firing squad being an extremely intimidating ring of potential mothers in law (keep in mind, at this point and through the course of the entire program there is neither hide nor hair of any of the actual prospective women to date... just the grim, stony mothers. To give these sacrificial male lambs some sliver of hope, they are presented with a montage of the photos of the women they'll probably never meet). These gargoyles then commence with what is, in effect, a hostile interrogation - aided by several separate judges and a camera crew picking apart the guy's life. Each time a mother decides that her daughter's too good for the guy, she get a chance to personally berate what she thinks are his shortcomings.
The only reason that a show as punishingly brutal as this has survived more than 3 episodes, I'm sure, is that there are just so many desperate men in China willing to walk barefoot over broken glass, arm wrestle a gorilla, or eat live spiders for a chance with a girl. My question is: Why don't they make a show about that instead?! I'd be thrilled to watch desperate guys be tasked with a castrating an unrestrained tiger for a date with a girl... but watching mothers grill him? Pass.
(CS) TAW Out.
The lycanthropic jottings of my fourth year prowling the Chinese moonlight.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Time lost and futures yet to come
Where has the time gone?
That's a question, I'm sure, I'll be asking more and more frequently in the years to come... but I never intended to leave this blog sit untended for 6 months. Wait, on second thought, I do know where the time has gone... into that little poop-machine I affectionately call "wee one."
Nevertheless, I left us on a cliffhanger... I promised a part two, and failed to deliver.
But let's just let bygones be bygones, and have a fresh start, no?
小c is pushing 9 months (!), Nancy's all healed, and continues to push toward her pre-preggers figure - not at my urging, certainly (more her sisters', I'm sure)... but I'm not complaining, either.
In spite of the whirls and rush of the day to day - job, wife, kid, and all those other little things that continue to find their way into the "inbox" of life - I find myself more and more frequently (and in many ways forced) to think about the future, both medium and long term.
My contract with Longman expires in August. I will have completed 2 years there at that time, and will, in fact, be among the longest-working teachers in the company. I learned the other day from my friend and former coworker Leon that I am in fact that last person from my "crop" of trainees who's still working there.
That's not surprising, though. Most people come as the same person I was when I went to Wenzhou: coming for the experience of China, and having a way to pay the bills while they do. Some even take it a step further: they work long enough for their year-long work visa to get pasted on their passport, and then they bugger off for parts unknown.
I'm reasonably sure that I'll be getting an email soon-ish, inquiring as to my plans after this contract is up, and offering a new year-long gig. Of course, there is the outside chance that they'll thank me for my time and show me the door... but given my length of employment, track record, and that they considered me in high enough standing to give me a "Star Teacher" award at last years annual company dinner, I'd be pretty surprised.
So what then? Certainly working for this company has been stable, reasonable work, with relatively few headaches, or employers taking all the cash and fleeing the country. So that's a plus.
If I were to accept another contract, I'd have a few specific things I'd want out of it...
1) a change of campus... for more than one reason. The travel distance, the absurdly out of the way location, the coworker I'd like to strangle about half the time.
2) a pay increase, of the substantial variety. High teens, at least.
3) a trained polar bear to ride + saddle. (Alright, I'm willing to compromise on that last one, the saddle might be a bit much)
The thing behind Door No. 2... is considerably more of a, shall we say, challenge. And that is the idea of returning to Wenzhou to work part-time, while also private-teaching and building a student base to open my own school. I am, after all, eminently qualified... and I have the Star Teacher Award to prove it (even though the name makes it sound like someone a teacher should be giving to a 3rd grader). It could also be done here in Shanghai, but that seems considerably more difficult...
Anyway, I shall continue to ponder these and other mysteries of the universe.... in between nap time, burpings, and diaper changes.
(CS) TAW Out.
send shivers down my spine
That's a question, I'm sure, I'll be asking more and more frequently in the years to come... but I never intended to leave this blog sit untended for 6 months. Wait, on second thought, I do know where the time has gone... into that little poop-machine I affectionately call "wee one."
Nevertheless, I left us on a cliffhanger... I promised a part two, and failed to deliver.
But let's just let bygones be bygones, and have a fresh start, no?
小c is pushing 9 months (!), Nancy's all healed, and continues to push toward her pre-preggers figure - not at my urging, certainly (more her sisters', I'm sure)... but I'm not complaining, either.
In spite of the whirls and rush of the day to day - job, wife, kid, and all those other little things that continue to find their way into the "inbox" of life - I find myself more and more frequently (and in many ways forced) to think about the future, both medium and long term.
My contract with Longman expires in August. I will have completed 2 years there at that time, and will, in fact, be among the longest-working teachers in the company. I learned the other day from my friend and former coworker Leon that I am in fact that last person from my "crop" of trainees who's still working there.
That's not surprising, though. Most people come as the same person I was when I went to Wenzhou: coming for the experience of China, and having a way to pay the bills while they do. Some even take it a step further: they work long enough for their year-long work visa to get pasted on their passport, and then they bugger off for parts unknown.
I'm reasonably sure that I'll be getting an email soon-ish, inquiring as to my plans after this contract is up, and offering a new year-long gig. Of course, there is the outside chance that they'll thank me for my time and show me the door... but given my length of employment, track record, and that they considered me in high enough standing to give me a "Star Teacher" award at last years annual company dinner, I'd be pretty surprised.
So what then? Certainly working for this company has been stable, reasonable work, with relatively few headaches, or employers taking all the cash and fleeing the country. So that's a plus.
If I were to accept another contract, I'd have a few specific things I'd want out of it...
1) a change of campus... for more than one reason. The travel distance, the absurdly out of the way location, the coworker I'd like to strangle about half the time.
2) a pay increase, of the substantial variety. High teens, at least.
3) a trained polar bear to ride + saddle. (Alright, I'm willing to compromise on that last one, the saddle might be a bit much)
The thing behind Door No. 2... is considerably more of a, shall we say, challenge. And that is the idea of returning to Wenzhou to work part-time, while also private-teaching and building a student base to open my own school. I am, after all, eminently qualified... and I have the Star Teacher Award to prove it (even though the name makes it sound like someone a teacher should be giving to a 3rd grader). It could also be done here in Shanghai, but that seems considerably more difficult...
Anyway, I shall continue to ponder these and other mysteries of the universe.... in between nap time, burpings, and diaper changes.
(CS) TAW Out.
send shivers down my spine
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