Snow in Xian - for one day, at least

A few weeks ago we had some very heavy if short-lived snow, making the usually grey urban mass a fantastic white. Riding my scooter home from work at 8.30 at night along the City Wall through the snow was one of the nicest experiences I've had in Xian...

Winter solstice - beware your ears

Yesterday was Dongzhi, or the middle day of winter. And it was also the day I appeared in the Shaanxi Daily. Click the link below:

http://www.sxdaily.com.cn/data/bsxakb/20091223_9775744_2.htm

The person next to me is a friend, opposite are two of her friends. All very innocent. And yes, a lack of regular physical activity has made me fatter, although in my defence, the angle is unfavourable and that pose was deliberate...

The Chinese text of the story reads as follows:
"Yesterday was Dongzhi, which means, as the saying goes, 'If you don't have a bowl of dumplings, no-one will sympathise with you if your ears freeze and fall off'. [My translation perhaps leaves a lot to be desired.] In the area around Dachejia Street [the street I live on] and the Xiangzi Temple, all the restaurants were thronging with people, with long queues stretching out the door. This excitement also attracted foreigners. This foreign chap is enjoying his dumplings on Dongzhi just like us Chinese!"

Google Translate produces a slightly different version, perhaps showing that computers can't do everything:
“Yesterday was the 24 integrity of the winter solstice, folk known as "the winter solstice misconduct dumplings bowl, frozen out Ear nobody, "the folk. The day, reporters in the cart Wenjiaxiang Xi'an, Hunan several sub-Temple Street The shop selling dumplings, dumplings and saw people who's interest is high, and everyone at the door waiting in a long Long. This lively scenes are infected with a foreigner. You see, the foreign dignitaries and the Chinese people, like the Winter Solstice dumplings to eat something!”

Apologies for the infection...

Yesterday I think I had about ten to fifteen people ask me if had eaten jiaozi (dumplings). Being a foreigner and generally nonplussed by festivals of all denominations, I figured I could take the risk of my ears falling off. But in the evening a friend phoned me up and said they were at a restaurant near my flat. It turns out I go past this restaurant every day, but names of restaurants are even harder to remember than Chinese people's names.

The three of them had waited for ages to be seated, and they called me just when they were getting a table. The restaurant has cannons outside and is adorned on the inside with pictures of emperors and replica clothing from the Qing Dynasty. Given the relationship in the past between the Qing Dynasty, Britain and cannons, I stayed away from mentioning the theme of the restaurant. Minimum expenditure per person was 40 kuai, comfortably exceeding my prediction. I don't like ordering food for other people, so I left the three of them to ensure 160 kuai was well spent.

The food was actually excellent, as it usually is. The same greenery (cauliflower, cabbage) that gets cooked in England and tastes awful tastes much better when it emerges from a Chinese kitchen. The suffering English children endure with greens during their childhood is not a misery inflicted upon their Chinese counterparts. There was also some beef on a bone. You put in a straw in the bone and drink the juices, then don some plastic see-through gloves and knaw away at the meat. It was actually very good once I had managed to put the gloves on.

Halfway through, I noticed a photographer taking some photos. Being the token foreigner in the restaurant, it was pretty obvious what he wanted - a picture of a waiguo pengyou (foreign friend) eating jiaozi on Dongzhi and holding his chopsticks badly. He took quite a lot, and I'm impressed, and of course grateful, that he managed to choose such a bad photo.

Conversation was the usual unfilling pap. My friend is okay but her two friends were a fairly common type of female university student - immature, no personality, a bad case of Little Emperor attitude and zero sense of humour. After finding out I've been here for two and a half years, they then asked me if I could use chopsticks. A silly question deserves a sarcastic response. I said no, and when I did use them, they were flabbergasted. In situations like these (which occur all the time), I can go a whole evening just humouring myself. It sounds rude, but it's either that or talking about mobile phones or brand name bags or the difference between American English and British English and other incredibly tedious topics.

But getting your photo in the provincial daily – not bad, that.

STOP PRESS: I've just spent the entire evening walking around the centre of Xian. After going to 12 newspaper stands, one bookshop and two hotels, I discovered that my photo has appeared in the worst selling newspaper in the entire province. Of all 15 places, only one had three old copies of the Shaanxi Daily. The answer for this was explained to me by the owner of the last newspaper stand - it's the official Party paper, so no one reads it. Given the unflattering photograph, perhaps this is a good thing.

Oscar breakthrough

Following my appearance on provincial television in March 2008, a few weeks ago I was asked to take part in a 25-minute discussion programme about female university students wanting to be the mistresses and "er nai" (private prostitutes) of rich men. And following that, I was phoned up by different people from the same channel who wanted to make another programme. It's just this sort of random interesting opportunity that crops up now and then that retains my interest in living in this overcrowded country.

Every night on Shaanxi TV 2 there's a 30-minute mini-soap, different every night, all made by amateurs. Collectively they are known as bai shi. I took part in one back in 2007. Everyone speaks in local dialect, which varies from being very similar to standard Mandarin to completely unintelligible, especially to me. The point is that the stories reflect the lives of the average person, or laobaoixing (old hundred names). The programme I was to take part in was a mock Oscars-style awards ceremony, and there were to be six judges, with me being one of the judges by virtue of the fact that I am a foreigner who can speak some Chinese and was available for filming.

When I met two of the station personnel in Starbucks two weeks before to discuss it, they told me that Furong Jiejie (The Lily Sister) would be one of the other judges. She is the equivalent of a Z-list celebrity, somebody from this province who became famous via the internet for being ugly, wearing tight horrible clothes and performing a series of poses and dances ranging between silly and vomit-inducing. The show was to be filmed over three afternoons, with three awards per day, and will be broadcast over three different days over Chinese New Year on Shaanxi TV 2 - potential audience, 60 million (likely audience, much, much lower).

I turned up on Tuesday morning for rehearsals, which involved me watching the opening performance and doing nothing else. For each of the three days there was a fairly elaborate act involving the presenters, nominees for the awards and various dancers. There was also an in-house band, complete with electric drumkit, keyboard for making amusing noises when something funny was said and an array of interesting outfits, my favourite being on day two when they dressed up like Viennese aristocrats. The judges - myself, Furong, a film director, a comedian, a professor of arts and a representative from the show's sponsor – got to sit back and watch the on-site director getting in a flap when the nominees, all amateur actors, stood in the wrong place and didn't move when they were supposed to.

For most of the awards, the actors would introduce themselves, then we the judges would vote for who to get rid of. Then the audience (30 or so people on either side behind each of the two rows of judges) would have their say. Some of the awards included some secretly filmed clips where the nominees had been set up and covertly filmed, Jeremy Beadle style. Then the actors and presenters and judges would have some easy back-and-forth light-hearted banter about who should win and why, then we would have the final vote and present the awards (a clear plastic Oscar-like trophy and a piece of tarted up A4 masquerading as a certificate).

The most entertaining category was the Male Impersonating A Woman, which involved some humorous alternative uses for mantou (steamed buns). Some of the other categories, though, failed to get the atmosphere going, particularly when for one prize only one nominee turned up. It's also evident that amateur actors doing comedy is much more successful than amateur actors doing serious acting. With the overall nature of the show being a cross between a variety show, talk show and prize-giving ceremony, it was quite difficult to really get into it. I replied when asked, made a few light-hearted comments (most of which were drowned out by the accompanying keyboard sounds), but didn't 'shine' as I think I would have liked to. My career in provincial television hangs in the balance.

I didn't do myself any favours after filming on the final day, either. I was talking slightly nervously to the male presenter, Shitou (a very big cheese in Shaanxi province), and some other people outside in the car park. I have a tremendous habit of missing a key sentence at a key time. He said something about going to dinner with the other guys. However, I didn't really catch it, and assumed he was talking to the other people, which looking back on it is unlikely. So that was another chance missed. Although at least I did get a phone number, so we live and hope.