You Are…Such a Boy in My Mind. I Like.

It’s been over a year since I’ve written in my now derelict, abandoned blogbaby. I guess you could make the argument that my neglect has correlated with my time spent in Shanghai, and I guess that’s a pretty reasonable assessment. Let’s blame it on busyness, the Chinese firewall, and the death of long-form blogging. This has never been a place of introspect, however, so moving on.

This holiday season is the first time I’ve been back home stateside in over a year and a half, and its been a great time seeing and catching up with family, friends, and Taco Bell. This also happens to be the first time I’ve been home to face family and friends and explain the debacle that was 4/20/2012 (a fairly easy date to remember).

So yeah, I was on a Chinese dating show. Most people who’ve read this far have probably seen it already, along with a recorded 500,000 views on the official show’s website. But just in case you haven’t, that’s it right there, and (no) thanks to Ben Roth for making the video widely available with captions to the English speaking world. So this is my opportunity to explain myself, and maybe salvage some respect from that circus of awkward dancing, hand holding, and overall buffoonery.

So I managed to get invited onto the show by these two girls who approached me on my subway ride to work one day who simply asked, “Would you like to be on Chinese tv?” I figured it couldn’t possibly be worse than my last appearance on CCTV (the sperm fracas), and agreed without really asking too many questions. Within a week, I was scheduled to appear on the show 百里挑一, which translates roughly into “Choosing One Out of One Hundred”. Depending on who you ask, it’s China’s second or third most popular dating show, but still nowhere as popular as the behemoth that is 非诚勿扰. I guess with the subtitles, the video speaks for itself, although Mr.Roth certainly took some liberties with translations. A few things worth nothing:

• 80% of the show is fixed, with contestants told ahead of time which girls fancy you, what their general likes and dislikes are, and the types of questions they’re likely to ask.
• The 20% that isn’t pre-determined is the clusterfuck of the last five minutes or so. No one told me there was to be dancing. Or 30 seconds of no smiling, eye to eye hand holding. Or that she would start crying on the spot.
• The aforementioned “she” is 牛蕾, or Joanna if you’ve gotta do the English thing. She turned out to be a very sweet girl, and we went out to dinner twice after all was said and done, but alas, things were not meant to be. Where is 牛蕾 these days? She got a bunch of plastic surgery and is now a Cos-play model.

I now have great peripheral vision!

All in all, it was a really fun experience that I don’t particularly regret. Most of the friends seemed to have enjoyed it enough, and even the mother wasn’t irreparably ashamed. Moving forward, I’ll try to keep the updates coming on a more regular basis. Check in next time for rare earth mines, Chinese gangsters, and my first appearance on NPR.

phillip