Everyone loves Friday. And I'm no exception.
This Friday it was a double bill of excitement for us here in Xining. In the afternoon our university held a Chinese Language foreign student/teacher talent competition. Our attendance in the audience was compulsory. While tonight I got last minute tickets from a cameraman friend for a special show on Qinghai TV (Amdo channel), a song tribute to a moustached cowboy-hatted Amdo star.
First off is the the university talent show. Foreigners were herded into the middle aisle. A group of half a dozen Tibetan lads sat off to the side. One with a gravity-defying quiff that gave him a good extra half a foot in height.
Up on stage we were pleasured by a singing duo of Koreans, one with an acoustic guitar; a Malaysian woman who waxed lyrical about her Chinese roots and the great friendship between Malaysia and Xining, a mad Russian in a suit who said he loved Qinghai, an English girl in a Tibetan chuba who strummed her mandolin and sung the Kangding Love Song in a soprano, a Canadian, fluent in Tibetan but not in Chinese, who talked a bit about tangkas, a series of dreadful poetry readings, a Dutch woman who sang the Chinese national anthem in knee-high boots, and a black guy in a cool trilby who crooned a Smokey Robinson-esque number in Chinese.
The highlight was a group of Mongolians who did an edgy dance number as a finale. The girls looked they might have been washing dishes, but the guys, descendants no doubt of the mighty Kublai Khan, were right into it, tent trouser legs flapping in raunchy rhythm.
Talent, there was not. Long spells of torturous Chinese sycophancy there was. It was nice to see that everyone got a prize, but the top prize went to the Chinese man who organized it! And why not?
Three runners up prizes went to the three brown noses: the Dutch girl who sang the Chinese anthem, the Malaysian woman who adores China and another Malaysian woman who recited poetry although it would have been nice if she hadn't.
When we emerged blinking we walked into a sandstorm. The sky was a very attractive browny-orange and our mouths soon felt they had morphed into the bottom of our shoes.
Then onto Qinghai TV. We crawled through the molasses of Xining's Friday evening rush-hour traffic to arrive just in time to have lost our seats but get two new ones. The entrance was guarded by people's armed police and coppers in hard white helmets and white leather braces. I wanted to twang them but they weren't the Village People.
We sat in the audience and clapped or waved our hands when directed. The performers, all very good, except for some young kids who were a bit rusty, mimed to their songs. So effectively we were listening to CDs. At very loud volume. In a hall. Surrounded by police.
The old Tibetan man in front of me kept blowing his nose into his hanky. The girl next to me kept checking her phone. The cops were watching. We could have done with a snack.
Three hours in our bums were frozen into a rictus of pain and we escaped.
That's Qinghai TV for you!
This Friday it was a double bill of excitement for us here in Xining. In the afternoon our university held a Chinese Language foreign student/teacher talent competition. Our attendance in the audience was compulsory. While tonight I got last minute tickets from a cameraman friend for a special show on Qinghai TV (Amdo channel), a song tribute to a moustached cowboy-hatted Amdo star.
First off is the the university talent show. Foreigners were herded into the middle aisle. A group of half a dozen Tibetan lads sat off to the side. One with a gravity-defying quiff that gave him a good extra half a foot in height.
Up on stage we were pleasured by a singing duo of Koreans, one with an acoustic guitar; a Malaysian woman who waxed lyrical about her Chinese roots and the great friendship between Malaysia and Xining, a mad Russian in a suit who said he loved Qinghai, an English girl in a Tibetan chuba who strummed her mandolin and sung the Kangding Love Song in a soprano, a Canadian, fluent in Tibetan but not in Chinese, who talked a bit about tangkas, a series of dreadful poetry readings, a Dutch woman who sang the Chinese national anthem in knee-high boots, and a black guy in a cool trilby who crooned a Smokey Robinson-esque number in Chinese.
The highlight was a group of Mongolians who did an edgy dance number as a finale. The girls looked they might have been washing dishes, but the guys, descendants no doubt of the mighty Kublai Khan, were right into it, tent trouser legs flapping in raunchy rhythm.
Talent, there was not. Long spells of torturous Chinese sycophancy there was. It was nice to see that everyone got a prize, but the top prize went to the Chinese man who organized it! And why not?
Three runners up prizes went to the three brown noses: the Dutch girl who sang the Chinese anthem, the Malaysian woman who adores China and another Malaysian woman who recited poetry although it would have been nice if she hadn't.
When we emerged blinking we walked into a sandstorm. The sky was a very attractive browny-orange and our mouths soon felt they had morphed into the bottom of our shoes.
Then onto Qinghai TV. We crawled through the molasses of Xining's Friday evening rush-hour traffic to arrive just in time to have lost our seats but get two new ones. The entrance was guarded by people's armed police and coppers in hard white helmets and white leather braces. I wanted to twang them but they weren't the Village People.
We sat in the audience and clapped or waved our hands when directed. The performers, all very good, except for some young kids who were a bit rusty, mimed to their songs. So effectively we were listening to CDs. At very loud volume. In a hall. Surrounded by police.
The old Tibetan man in front of me kept blowing his nose into his hanky. The girl next to me kept checking her phone. The cops were watching. We could have done with a snack.
Three hours in our bums were frozen into a rictus of pain and we escaped.
That's Qinghai TV for you!
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