The Chinese New Year Gala: A Travel Story

TV in other countries can be very curious.

Over the years, I’ve had a few students and acquaintances who have participated in the Chinese New Year’s Gala. For those of you not in the know, this is the big televised event that 1.4 billion people reliably watch every year after the Spring Festival Reunion Dinner. It is New Year’s Rockin’ Eve except a lot more significant for its sheer scale.

The Gala is a variety special with events that span the Chinese pop culture landscape in all its weird glory. Depending on the year, one might see the elaborate mass dance numbers that foreigners associate with modern Chinese culture; the pop music recitals and broad humor that well-traveled foreigners know is the real heart of modern Chinese culture; or the patriotic poetry that seems to creep into everything. Those of my acquaintance have been dancers or musicians or even presenters for the local events.

There’s room for the laowai to get involved, as well. Once upon a time, televised events like the Gala were the zenith for the aspiring white money — well-paying, high-profile, and not especially difficult. Any foreigner able to fake his way through a few bad Mandarin jokes could land several gigs a year hosting or producing videos and earn a respite from distributing flyers in a silly costume or fronting for questionable fly-by-night businesses.

I never had the opportunity to participate in the Gala, which didn’t mean I wasn’t afforded the chance to humiliate myself on television all the same.

I’d received an invitation from my company to sit in at the taping of one of the various Gala events. Actually, the term “invitation” might not be right, implying as it does that this was voluntary. Foreigners in China get press-ganged into various competitions and spectacles by their companies or schools, and it’s best to take them with some degree of good humor.

At the time, I was living in what the Chinese absurdly refer to as a “small city” — only a few million people — but it was fairly important in the national media ecosystem. The studio where the taping would take place was not the tiny building of the local affiliates from my rural youth, but a great room to rival those of the big networks — big enough to hold the dozens of dancers scheduled for the main event. It was actually quite impressive, in that from-the-sticks sense that any building larger than a barn is noteworthy.

More impressive than the studio was the cast. This “small city” has managed to secure not one, but four white monkeys to host the event. Two women, at that — Caucasian women being a precious commodity in East Asia, a minority of foreigners in those days and generally less willing than the men to debase themselves for money. Ah, but then there was the topper: The live audience would be full of laowai as well.

In China, foreigners exist to advertise. The teachers, businesspeople and assorted outcasts in the audience would make the event look good. My company was thinking along those lines — having their foreign staff in the audience would make them look good. They provided us with garishly colored t-shirts with the company logo and eye-catching accouterments, as well as instructions to act like absolute idiots when the camera panned over the audience.

Point one: None of the foreigners from the other companies were made to do this.

Point two: The camera never panned over the audience — not even once.

Point three: My coworkers didn’t need to be instructed to act like absolute idiots.

I didn’t recognize many of the people in the cars that took us to the studio. I don’t know if this speaks more to the size of the company or my general sense of propriety. A significant portion of them were intoxicated; some were drinking out of flasks of cheap baijiu on the ride out. Some of them heckled the dancers and made unbidden racist remarks. One of them managed to lose an article of clothing that he was wearing. It was a proud moment for me, actually, as none of them were Americans.

Now, I can’t say that I enjoyed attending that show. The Chinese sense of humor is too broad for my tastes, and the old-fashioned variety shows that they favor have never had much purchase for me. Even so, I have no special regret for sitting in that sweaty studio and watching my fellow laowai make fools of themselves. Without understanding it at the time, I was learning something about cross-cultural understanding.

Maybe I even learned something about myself that evening — if only that I’m not cut out to be a white monkey.

Interested in more stories about China? Consider downloading a copy of Surviving the Dragon, a collection of essays on life in China. It’s free from 10/04–10/08!