The lobby of the Jiangsu Provincial Broadcasting Corporation had a floor of shiny black stone and an atrium that rose up dozens of stories to a high ceiling. Vertical banners with portraits of the famous hosts of the channel’s shows hung all around the room. I eyed each host and their unintelligible signatures, thinking to myself that not one of these people was the least bit well known in the US. Here, however, they were gods of television, and I would be going onstage tomorrow with one of them.
I had been invited to the TV show “Feichang Liaode” (How Outrageous!) by a chain of fluke occurrences. I had worked hard in July to put together a small set of Chinese language standup comedy that I could film and subtitle to put online. On the last day of the month, I finally felt my performance was strong and tight enough to be worth enduring the tedium of the subtitling process, and put the video online on a Tuesday. Come Friday, the video only had 500 hits, but that morning my phone started buzzing constantly—my Weibo (Chinese twitter) page was reporting that I was getting several new fans a minute. A quick search online confirmed my hunch: Youku (Chinese Youtube) had placed the standup set on its front page. Two hours of exposure netted me a hundred thousand views, and amongst these views was a producer from Jiangsu TV.
“We want you to come and be a contestant on the show,” Lin Lin, my newest fan, informed me. The show was a guessing game, where a contestant would talk to people with signs behind them saying things like “I pretended to be a time-travelling beggar” and “I was abandoned on the highway by my husband.” These people would tell stories about their experience, and the contestant had to ask questions to ascertain if the stories were real or not.
Lin Lin was eager to have me on the show, because compared to most shows which ask foreigners mainly to look pretty and clap their hands, foreigners who could think on their feet quickly enough in Chinese to ask interesting questions were harder to find. There was the allure of the possibility for a grand prize trip to Europe. “And also, the host of the show is Guo Degang, so that should be interesting for you!”
It was. Guo Degang is China’s most famous comedian, and, particularly pertinent to my Fulbright research, is responsible for reviving the art form of Xiangsheng amongst the youth of China. Guo’s routines are part of the Chinese youth’s comedic memory, and as a celebrity he has hosted many events and shows. A chance to go onstage with Guo was reason enough to go to Nanjing for two days of shooting. “Plus, we will pay for your airfare and hotel!”
And so I found myself in Jiangsu TV’s main building in Nanjing, being led out of the atrium by an assistant and into a large conference room. “Please wait here until Lin Lin arrives,” the assistant told me.
The room was dull and gray, full of big black leather chairs surrounding a large wooden table. The only person in the room set a start contrast to the surroundings. She was a young Chinese girl dressed in an electric pink jumpsuit with hair dyed dirty blonde in streaks. Her fake eyelashes were about five inches long, and as I sat down beside her I noticed her fake turquoise nails made her look like a fashionable tiger. The tip of her pointer finger had a plastic gemstone on it the size of a penny. I felt like reminding her the cameras would be on tomorrow, not tonight, and she hadn’t needed to dress up so much.
She looked up and flashed her eyes as me. “Nice to meet you,” she said to me. “I’m Xiaomei.”
“I’m Jesse.”
“I’m very curious.”
Here we go again, I thought to myself.
Every time I go on TV, I always get hit on by models. This is not my way of slyly suggesting that I am the most virile male specimen on the planet. Rather, it is likely a by-product of the process that decides which women make it onto TV. It seems that every woman that I have ever met on a Chinese TV show is either foreign or a model (sometimes both). In Beijing, a tall, willowy girl with blue hair named Ye Zi would follow me around and snap pictures of us every time I went on her show, “Beijing Guest”. When I saw the tagged photos online, I discovered that Ye Zi was “Ms. Teen Shenzhen 2010”. Working your way up in the business surely involves some well-placed flattery, but those without the skill for discretion excrete a flirtatious mist at all times. Thus, my days on TV shoots were often spent trying to converse with tall, thin, pale women about things both Chinese models and I had in common. These topics tended to be few and hard to find.
Lin Lin saved me from the tiger claws by entering the room shortly thereafter. She informed us that even though they had already flew us down to Nanjing, there would be a test round of questioning that night, and if we failed to be able to interact fluidly with her in a practice round, we would not be able to perform the next day. Luckily, I had experience playing similar games in both English and Chinese through improv, and wasn’t worried—at least, not nearly as worried as Xiaomei.
“Oh nooooo!” she wailed, pouting. “I am so bad at asking questions!” Before I had time to digest this statement, she turned to me, saying, “I can only ask the type of questions that let me know if guys have girlfriends.” She actually winked at me as she said it.
I was amazed that Lin Lin didn’t throw her right out of the room. Apparently, admitting without hesitation that you were unqualified for the job you’d been flown in to did not even merit a reaction. “Well, we’ll do your trial first. But first, we need your info. Name?”
“Xiaomei.”
“Age?”
Xiaomei pouted again. Grinning, I suspected she didn’t want me to know how old she was, but I was curious to see how she would respond to the adversity of being put on the spot, so I said nothing. “Too old,” she said.
“How old?”
“23,” she said.
I slapped my hands on my thighs. “I’m 23!” I said. “Am I too old?”
“You’re fine,” Lin Lin assured me, eager to continue the interview. She focused back on Xiaomei. “What do you do?”
“I’m a model in Shanghai,” she replied, and I fist-pumped silently—guessed right!— an action that went unnoticed by Xiaomei as she fluttered her eyelashes.
“Okay, let’s have our sample conversation. The topic: ‘I was once stuck up-side down on a roller coaster.’”
The next five minutes were a joy to watch. Xiaomei had not been practicing traditional Chinese etiquette when underplaying her question-asking abilities. She would think until steam came out her ears to put the most inane questions to Lin Lin, who told a story about how she may (or may not) have been stranded on a theme park ride.
She had also not been lying about the girlfriend questions, although she didn’t have quite the tact I’d imagined. An excerpt:
Lin Lin: I’d gone with a friend of mine from college to the theme park.
Xiaomei: Your boyfriend?
Lin Lin: No.
Xiaomei: Was he single?
Lin Lin: It doesn’t matter!
Xiaomei was clearly trying to catch Lin Lin in a logical trap, to make her stutter or give some tell that there was false information. At one point, she seized on the fact that Lin Lin described her “kid brother” as being 1.7 meters tall (about 5’7’’).
Xiaomei: How is your ‘kid brother’ taller than me?
Lin Lin: He’s a big kid! Our family has good genes.
Xiaomei: I don’t know about that…
Lin Lin: What does that mean? We have good genes!
In the end, Xiaomei guessed that Lin Lin was telling the truth. I, silently, guessed the opposite. I was correct.
Xiaomei was distraught. “I want to win the grand prize!” she cried. “If I guess wrong, I’ll just have to go home with nothing!” She seemed on the verge of tears at the prospect. “Has that ever happened to anyone? That they lose on the first round?”
Lin Lin smiled. “Rarely,” she said.
I wondered if those contestants might have been self-professed bad question askers as well. I hadn’t ever thought of asking questions as a skill, but apparently it was.
My own trial went smooth enough. I answered questions about Lin Lin’s story, “I was a rent-a-girlfriend.”
Me: Why did he ask to rent you as a girlfriend?
Lin Lin: He had a big party coming up, and he wanted to make his ex-girlfriend jealous, so he approached me and said that he would buy me an iPhone if I came to the party with him.
Me: So it wasn’t because he was gay?
Lin Lin laughed loudly, but then quickly recovered. “No,” she said, and then added, “By the way, you can’t say “gay” on TV.”
“I know, I know,” I said.
My question-asking skills were solid, and I guessed correctly that Lin Lin was lying again. Xiaomei eyed me enviously, clearly imagining me enjoying the European vacation that (if it actually existed) was rightfully hers.
I got the go-ahead to leave, while Xiaomei stuck behind for extra practice. I noticed her eyes followed me on the way out, but I meant to head back to the hotel and get some rest. After all, I had a big question-asking day ahead of me.