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Q: Would you participate in a Chinese game show?
Anytime i have watched chinese dating/ game shows i have come away with one impression time and time again. Chinese are freaking wierd. And man do they love to sing!
Participants are almost always forced to sing dance or do other random shit. It actually makes me uncomfortable.
People always tell me to join these shows but there is no chance in hell id put myself in a position where i am forced to do any of that. Not to mention my chinese isnt there yet althoigh from the show last night, i am confident i could fake it.
Anyways. There is a new show called Hello China. And its a chinese gameshow strictly for foreigners. The host is a chinese dude. There is another co-host or teacher or whatever whose purpose is unclear and she is a foreigner and 4 contestants all foreign. Russian. Spanish. Algerian... And i forget.
The purpose of the show is to just answer random questions about China. And i mean random. Like how many noodles can this guy put through the head of a needle? Famous mountains and things like that.
But man, ill be damned if every single laowai wasnt strutted out there and made to sing or dance or look like a fucking moron. As the show went on i begin to feel a little bad for them as it was becomming clear not all of them could speak as well as they let on. Cut to ALOT of confused laowai faces. And it wasnt clear what any of them recieved.
Ok i know some people really love china and still have rose colored glasses and all that. But are there really people out there that dont beleive that foreigners are a tool to be used and made forced to dance like a monkey? What possible reason would someone have to do this? Who would accept?
Would you ever join a tv/ game show if language permitted it?
Does anyone know anyone who has joined? What do they get paid? Was it worth it to act like a chinese propagandist tit in front of hundreds of millions?
Not a chance...and that's one of the reasons Mark Roswell (Da Shan) is so despised.
If you pitched a show to the CBC whereby you'd have Chinese people who can speak English doing the same thing, it would be tar and feather time.
Although, there are some foreigners here who really want the exposure. There used to be a series out of Shanghai where each and every foreigner acted exactly like their perceived stereotypes (married white guy plays around on his doting, devoted Chinese wife, white women goes into constant hysterics over every issue, black women who is totally aloof to the feelings of everyone around her...)
I would go on a gameshow that is similar to it's a knockout. That is one crazy show.
I'd go on a game show if you could get into physical fights on it. Winner take all...
I wouldn't even participate in one in my own country, and considering Chinese game/talk shows all look like random stuff coming out from a 12 years old kid's mind... no way I would ever go through this kind of embarrassement.
Most Youtube channels look more pro than whatever Chinese TV puts on air.
I had to go on a show once. Employer was conveniently vague about what he expected me to do. I knew it was for local TV, and I'd be singing If You're Happy with a couple of the training school kids. But I didn't know it would be in the blazing summer heat outdoors, let alone that I'd be competing in a fucking American-style talent show against flocks of half-naked 8-year-olds trained to dance like pedophile-prostitute-playthings.
One of the staff told me he was offended when the silly judge panel gave me 3x NO afterwards. I made it very clear that if he tried to give me 'another chance' on stage, he would become my archnemesis. The boss was satisfied; it was just about being seen in the company uniform on TV anyway.
mike695ca:
Jesus a talent show? What was your talent? Shooting daggars from your eyes at judges?
coineineagh:
My talent was nodding and smiling like a well-adjusted idiot. I can and have performed in front of large audiences quite capably. I have fended off impatient ayi's trying to claim Santa's goodie bag for themselves without losing my cool. I'm willing to do a lot for the sake of entertainment. BUT I never want to be near one of those crappy, overdone shows ever again. Especially not a children's talent show: If anyone plants a rumour about a foreign teacher being too interested in Chinese kids, my corpse will only be released to my home country after my next-of-kin sign an agreement not to prosecute.
Nope, I find all their game shows very cheesy. In any case, they lack originality. Most are US copies.
They are absolutely horrible. Some people ARE very talented but the way Chinese package the act and show is just shameless.
Do you also notice how about every 3rd to 4th act has a sob story?
"I am here because my dying uncle needs surgery, my dog just drowned in the lake, my mother is disabled... blah blah blah", while everyone in the studio starts crying."
Chinese are easily entertained by this pattern on their game shows... throw on a few people and mock them, throw on one ACTUALLY talented person or two, then throw on someone with a sob story and repeat... All the while, you know the hosts are bored out of their mind but MUST act extremely interested.
coineineagh:
Only 1 in 3 has a sob story? When my in-laws put that crap on the tube, it feels like guilt-tripping is a mandatory wrap-up to each and every performance.
Argh, I already have little patience for those game shows on the TV. The same 4 sound effects played every freak'in second, the hosts trying way too hard to be cool and funny, the mandatory cute kid moment, the mandatory tear moment... No way I go do the dancing white monkey for any amount of money or for the, hum... 1 minute of fame.
For a documentary (CCTV 8 have lots of cool documentary, translations of foreign show and a few local ones), if I can contribute something original and useful, I would be ok to talk or present something. Like, in the spirit of the "A Bite of China", something about being a non-Chinese in China, that would be honest and not an attempt to glorify anything. I would be sitting on a nice sofa, sipping some coffee and chit-chatting with the reporter 
