Month: June 2020

Another one-off gig I took was to appear in a Chinese commercial. The commercial was for a company called Haier, a multinational home appliance and consumer electronics company based in my city of Qingdao. The company designed the HVAC systems for our newly built subway system and this commercial was meant to show off this feat of engineering.

I had been introduced to a casting director from a friend who was cast as a westerner plant for a meeting. Many companies believe that having westerners involved in their companies is a sign of status. As a result, for large conferences and conventions, these companies will often hire western faces to pretend to work for the company for the day. Usually, they are not required to speak and are just supposed to show up, pretend to be involved with what is going on, and look like a proud westerner doing business in China.

My friend had been cast for a planning conference for the annual beer festival, the largest in Asia. His duties included showing up to a posh 5-star hotel on a Friday morning in a suit and drinking free beer all morning. For this, he was paid the equivalent of $600 USD. Hearing of this, I demanded an introduction to the casting director.

We met a few days later in a Starbucks. She took some photos and said she’d be in touch. Not too long after, she messaged me to see if I’d be interested in the Haier commercial. It was to promote the newly opened subway and I would play an engineer that designs the HVAC.

They gave me a call time of 8:00 the following Thursday morning at one of the subway stations. I asked them if they wanted me to supply anything costume-wise but was told it would be taken care of. Still, knowing how small Chinese clothing sizes run, I brought two sets of shirts, pants, and dress shoes with me. Better have it and not need it than need it and not have it has always been my mantra on set and I was determined to carry that ethos to working in front of the camera, as well.

I arrived at the subway station a few minutes early and met Ksenia, a beautiful blonde Russian woman, who would also appear in the commercial. They introduced us to the three Chinese actors who would be joining us in the commercial. None of them spoke any English but we introduced ourselves in Chinese and then went through the usual set procedure of checking in and then sitting around and waiting.

Very soon, the costume designer approached me with an H&M bag. Inside was my costume, purchased the night before, as evidenced by the receipt. The tags were still on the clothes and they asked me not to take them off, as they planned on returning them the next day. I pulled them out of the bag and realized that they’d decided to costume me in skinny jeans and a skinny-fit dress shirt. Needless to say, I don’t have the body to pull off skinny anything. They also provided a belt and shoes that didn’t match. I asked if they’d rather use some of the wardrobe options I brought but was told to please dress in the clothes provided.

I squeezed into my wardrobe, tucked the tags out of view, and walked over to the first camera setup. The first shot was to be a tracking shot following us, five talented engineers, walking down the subway concourse while looking up at a heating duct and then referring back to a set of blueprints Ksenia would be holding. We pulled it off without a hitch in just a few takes, walking and pretending to talk. We even made gestures from the blueprint to the ducts, just like real engineers.

We shot a few more things inside the subway station, culminating in us boarding and riding in an actual subway car. The city wouldn’t allow us to shut down the subway, so we had to shoot on a live subway. We boarded a car and the Assistant Director tried his best to clear out the tail car but a few old-timers refused to move for anything, so we waited patiently until they reached their destination before sealing off our car for a shot.

After the subway shoot, we broke for lunch and had a company move to an office location for the afternoon. Lunch wasn’t too bad, a spicy noodle soup with seafood. We ate in the office cafeteria which was right next to where we’d be shooting in the afternoon.

The first shot of the afternoon would be of the five engineers in a meeting, apparently discussing the planning of the upcoming subway build. They surrounded us with design photos and more blueprints as we gathered around a table, pointing to more things. As we were shooting, the director kept yelling out to the AD in Chinese that he wanted to see more of the “white faces.” He also repeatedly called Ksenia and me ‘laowai,’ a pejorative term for foreigner. Ksenia and I weren’t sure if he realized that we both understood Chinese enough to know what he was saying but we rolled with it.

Next up, would be my first big solo shot. The idea was to put me at a drafting table, working on the all-important design. They told me where to stand and how to make it look like I was drawing something without actually making any marks. Then, right before the camera rolled, the director approached and told me my motivation. In broken English, he told me that he wanted me to be “an artist frustrated.” I am trying to design the perfect air conditioner but I can’t get it right. I am repeatedly balling up and chucking a design before beginning anew on another sheet of paper. Finally, he tells me, inspiration hits. Then he wants my eyes to go big and for me to laugh. I ask him if he really means laugh. He replies, “Yes. ‘HA-HA-HA!’ I have done it. I have designed subway’s greatest air conditioner!”

I do as he says, but he wants me to go bigger with my laughing. I cackle like an evil villain, cartoonish and over the top and he loves it. I ball up the paper and throw it, but he wants me to try it in different ways. Shoot it like a basketball. Over my left shoulder. Over my right shoulder. We shoot it a dozen ways before he’s satisfied.

For my final shot of the day, they bring me into an empty auditorium. The shot will be of me sitting alone at a chair in the middle of the room while a lone spotlight shines down on me. This is to be my dark night of the soul. The night before the final draft of the subway plan is due. I am sitting in an empty auditorium, as engineers often do, I guess, having no clue how I will make the deadline. I sit alone and ponder my fate, wondering and hoping the muse will hit and I will create something that the subway Gods will approve.

After this last shot, I’m dismissed from set. The director shakes my hand and tells me to look out for the commercial in about two months on CCTV-1, the top channel in China. I’ve never seen the commercial, nor has anyone I know. I’m told it aired several times, though. I’ve asked for a link to the finished copy but the casting director hasn’t been able to get one. I truly hope that one day I can track down this gem and post it.

The casting director has called me for a few more roles but, unfortunately, the days and times have clashed with my job and I’ve been unable to accept them. I even had to turn down two film extra roles in two movies that turned out to be big box office successes. The first, Crazy Alien, would have had me working alongside Tom Pelphrey, who played Laura Linney’s brother on the most recent season of Ozark. The second was for a role as a scientist in Wandering Earth, China’s biggest sci-fi film ever, which is currently streaming on Netflix.

Working in China, there are often many short term or one-off gigs that an English speaker can often pick up. Quite a few times, I’ve worked with Chinese companies to either teach their employees some very specific business English jargon relating to their field or educate them on American culture and how to connect with it from across the world.

One such gig was when I was hired to consult a wig company on American culture. Yes, a bald guy was being brought in to advise a wig company. They were a successful company in China but had only recently started expanding their sales to North America. Their sales and marketing staff spoke decent enough English but they really didn’t have a clue about how to connect with one specific subculture that had taken a liking to their wigs. Apparently, their wigs had become very popular in the crossdressing community, especially among drag queens.

So they hired me to educate them on crossdressing, drag queens, and the LGBTQ community. Yes, a cis white male mansplaining these cultures to a group of Chinese women and one gay Chinese man who were at times hilariously ignorant of terms or definitions. We watched and discussed clips of Rupaul’s Drag Race, as well as drag shows I was able to find online. I even played them the musical numbers from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

They had hired me to consult with them the week before Easter. While I was there, the manager of the company asked if I would mind checking out the English-language email that they were sending out to their retail partners in the US and Canada. I agreed and was extremely glad I did. Each email started with some version of, “Good day. I hope you are productively planning to celebrate your savior rising from the dead this weekend. Now please allow me to tell you about our upcoming promotions…” I convinced them to drop all the religious banter but finally relented on letting them wish their partners a Happy Easter.

With everything going on back home in the States over the past two weeks, I wanted to relay a conversation I had about racism with a Chinese colleague. From what I’ve experienced in Asia, racism is much more out in the open here. Many Chinese and Koreans will readily admit that they hate the Japanese, as one example. And some Cambodian and Vietnamese have told me multiple times that they hate the Chinese after telling them that I live in China. This obviously isn’t everyone and the younger generation is getting much better at moving past racist stereotypes and accepting people outside of their culture but, unfortunately, it is accepted in public much more openly than in the U.S.

With that in mind, the following is a conversation I had with a Chinese coworker. For the purposes of the story, we’ll call him “Steve.” Steve was educated in the UK, where he graduated with a math degree from a prestigious university. He was in his late 20s at the time and an otherwise well-rounded and intelligent guy.

Steve: “Tom, are you a racist?”

Yes, this is how the conversation started. We weren’t talking previously. He approached me at work and led with that.

Tom: “Um, no. I don’t think I am.”

Steve: “Americans always say that, but Chinese are different.”

Tom: “Are you a racist.”

Steve: “Yes. I hate Koreans, Japanese, and Indians.”

He was almost proud of it when he told me. Koreans and Japanese are pretty standard responses for Chinese to hate but Indians confused me a bit.

Tom: “Why Indians?”

Steve: “When I was at University in the UK, I lived next to three Indians. They were always very loud and the hallway always smelled like curry because of them.”

Tom: “Well, let’s put aside that there are definitely cultural differences between Chinese and Indians. Let’s pretend that these three Indians were complete assholes. All three of them – asshole, asshole, asshole. You do know there are over a billion Indians in the world, right? And as a guy with a math degree, do you think three is a large enough sample size to judge a billion people?”

Steve: “That’s a good point.”

Tom: “And you know Aarthi (a mutual friend) is Indian, right?”

Steve: “That’s true. And I like her just fine.”

Tom: “See it doesn’t make sense to hate a whole group of people just because of a couple of assholes.”

Steve: “You know, I used to hate black people before I knew any. But then I met two black guys at university who were both really good guys.”

Honestly, at this point, I felt like I was talking to an 8-year-old, but like I said this a well-educated, otherwise intelligent guy. It just goes to show how ingrained racism can be, especially in a place where it’s not looked at shamefully.

Tom: “Also, look at Rich (another mutual friend who is black).”

Steve: “Yeah, Rich is a good guy. So all the black people I’ve known have been cool.”

Tom: “True, but the next one you meet might be an asshole. But that doesn’t mean anything more than that guy is an asshole. Don’t get racist on black people because of him.”

Steve: “Okay, you make some good points. I still hate Koreans and Japanese, though.”

And with that, he turned and walked away, leaving me baffled and trying to wrap my brain around our two-minute conversation. There was no context for it. It was apropos of nothing. He literally walked in the room, came up to me, had this conversation, and walked out. It was definitely something he had been thinking about and I still wonder what the impetus to this conversation was.

Obviously, this conversation in no way is meant to address the bigger problems of systemic racism in the U.S. It’s just as obvious that there needs to be major changes in the institution of policing in the US. Personally, I’ve long thought that we need to reform the influence that police unions have, as well as civil asset forfeiture, quotas, and qualified immunity. I hope that some good is able to come out of the dissension we’ve seen, not just in the last two weeks but in the last several decades, as this is not a new issue.

I have several friends in the law enforcement community. A few of them have told me about how they have tried to address problems in discrimination and policing tactics from the inside and that it is virtually impossible. This institutional change has to come externally. We need to put pressure on our elected officials and do so consistently until it is fixed, not just every time a black life is taken.

The other day, I witnessed a parking cop ticketing a police car that was parked illegally. At first, I just laughed at the absurdity but then something even more bizarre happened. The police officer whose car was being ticketed came running out of the government building he was in. I expected him to tear into this much younger parking cop for daring to ticket him. Instead, though, he pleaded with him. He told him that he would move his car immediately and asked him to please not ticket him. The parking cop refused and wrote the ticket. What I saw wasn’t unusual for China. Here, as in many Asian countries that I’ve seen first-hand, the police aren’t above the law. Sure, they may still be corrupt, ineffectual, or lazy, but they still have to pay parking tickets, even if it’s for their police cruiser. Could you see the same thing happening in the States?

The following is what life has been like in Qingdao since I’ve come back. Many of my friends and family have been constantly asking me what it’s been like here, so here it is. Apologies if it’s a bit on the long side.

I flew back to Qingdao from Cambodia on February 10. There were rumors that very soon, either China would cancel all incoming international flights, or Cambodia would stop its service to China. From everything I was seeing, it looked like the coronavirus, as it was still called then, was about to spread throughout Asia and I did not want to be stranded in Cambodia. While it has made great strides in the last two decades, its health care system still falls far short of other Asian countries.

Boarding the flight in Phnom Penh, I was asked to fill out a medical form about my recent travel history. They also took my temperature three times and a mask was required from as soon as I set foot in the airport. My flight connected in Shanghai, where I had a four-hour layover. As I deplaned, and before I entered the terminal, my temperature was taken again and I filled out another medical form. My temperature would be taken yet again as I went through Immigration and Customs.

Shanghai Pudong Airport is normally one of the ten busiest airports in the world. After I successfully made it through Customs, I took the shuttle to the main terminal for my connecting flight. I went through security and the other side looked like a ghost town. It was 9:00 am and just past the security check, there was no one to be found in either direction.

My flight from Shanghai to Qingdao was close to empty. Upon arrival, I had my temperature taken twice more. I picked up my luggage and caught a taxi home. My apartment complex is roughly half a city block with nine large towers of homes. There are two gates on every side, none of which have ever been closed or locked since I moved in a year and a half ago. When the taxi dropped me off, though, I found that only one gate was open; the others had been padlocked shut with barbed wire strung over the top.

At the gate, three men in security uniforms asked to see my passport. They wanted to know if I lived in the complex and where I had come from. They again took my temperature and made me sign in on a ledger tracking everyone that had come through the gate that day. After they made sure I wasn’t trying to sneak into the complex, they told me that I would have to self-quarantine myself for 14 days. I was not to leave my apartment for any reason. Finally, I was home and was able to take off my mask after wearing it for the past 11 hours.

I behaved myself and stayed in for the next two days but on day three, my cupboards were almost bare and I needed to restock. I decided to take my chances and walk to the supermarket across the street. I donned my mask and made it past the security at the gate without an issue. They barely looked up as I walked through. I still had to get back through, but at least I would have groceries at that point.

At the supermarket, I had to go through the same procedure as my apartment. I filled out a form and they took my temperature. The large supermarket was almost devoid of shoppers. I was worried about runs on staples like bottled water and toilet paper but both were stocked to the gills. Actually, other than the lack of a crowd, the supermarket looked completely normal. I bought enough food to last me the next two weeks and headed home.

I didn’t have the same good luck when I approached my security gate. There was a woman there that I hadn’t seen before and apparently she was the boss. She asked me when I had arrived and then scolded me for breaking my quarantine. If I needed food or supplies, I was supposed to ask a neighbor to go to the store for me. Finally, she let me go with the threat that if I was caught out again, the police would be notified and I would be forced into the government-supervised quarantine, which entailed checking into a motel that the government had taken over. I would be locked into a small room with no refrigerator or microwave, be served three barely edible meals a day, and then be billed for the stay at the normal motel rate upon checkout. A friend was unlucky enough to suffer this fate.

I spent the remainder of the two weeks inside. Although it was the middle of February, so it’s not like I’d have been spending much time outside anyway. On day 15, I felt myself going a little stir crazy and decided to go out and see what the neighborhood looked like. The security guards smiled and waved as I walked past them with my head held high. I was no longer a rule-breaker.

I live in a fairly busy part of the city. There is a large mall and the streets are usually constantly busy with traffic. Here I was, though, late morning on a weekday and it was silent. No cars. No people. The few I did see all wore masks, hurried to get where they were going, and they kept a good ten feet between each other. Every restaurant and shop I walked past was shuttered. As a rough guess, I’d say there are about 200 restaurants within a quarter-mile from my home, all of them were closed.

In late February, as businesses began to reopen, the government started using an app to track everyone’s health and movements. Wechat is an all-in-one app combining messaging, mobile payment, and social media. It is ubiquitous in China, with over one billion active accounts. The tracking app was run through WeChat and it was required to enter any business or public transportation. You would swipe your phone and, hopefully, it would respond with a green signal. This meant that you had been successfully tracked as well as confirming that you hadn’t been in close proximity of anyone that has tested positive for Covid-19.

On average, I scan this app about five times a day, meaning my location is being tracked everywhere I go. My temperature is also taken at all of these places, so about five times a day. As someone who is fiercely pro-privacy, this has been a lot for me to accept and I am very wary of its abuse. Still, moving to China, I knew I would always have to forfeit a lot of the privacy rights I enjoy in the States. Many Chinese are also apprehensive about this tracking app being abused and with good reason. One city, Hangzhou, has already proposed making the use of the app permanent. Its citizens responded with uproar, though, and when polled by a local news service, 95% of the Chinese responders were against it.

Things slowly got better. By the beginning of March, the first restaurants started opening, first for delivery, then by seating tables several feet apart, and finally, by the end of the month, it was back to normal. Except, it wasn’t. Normally, restaurants in China are always packed at night. It’s the main social gathering place for men. They will sit for hours, chatting, smoking, and drinking Tsingtao beer. Even now, the restaurants are, at best, half-full during peak hours.

Before the spread of the virus, I was scheduled to start back to work after the Chinese New Year holiday on February 5. We started teaching short online classes in late February, but I was only working about 2-3 hours each week. That has gradually picked up to the point where I hit 12 hours one week. Now, they have finally announced that school will start back full-time and in-person next week. Summer vacation has been canceled and kids will resume classes once their school passes a stringent safety inspection.

There is some good news. Weather-wise, today has been the best day of the year: 75 degrees and sunny. I went for a long walk around my neighborhood and through the large park that sits in back of my apartment complex. For the first time since this started, I saw more people without masks than wearing them. Also, handshakes have come back. And concerts. Well, small scale anyway. Last week, I went to a small punk club that could maybe hold 100 people to watch a friend’s band play. It was packed wall-to-wall and only a few wore masks. If that is happening in China, it is only a matter of time, hopefully, things will get back to normal in other parts of the world.

Many here are afraid of a second wave and there are lots of precautions being taken to avoid one but people are going about resuming their lives. It took four months of everyone staying in to flatten the curve. When we went out, we were aggressively tracked, required to wear masks, and health markers were checked multiple times a day. From what I’ve seen in the States and other countries, many of the precautions being taken are extremely reasonable. Stay home as much as you can and stay safe and this too will pass.