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Community: Real Life

Small screen queen


Liz

Liz is a 24-year-old who has decided to take a break from city life and visit one of the most mysterious and colourful countries in the world.
Entry: 4

Liz does some moonlighting as a TV anchorwoman and stumbles across a corpse in the dead of night.

It seems that getting on TV in China is easier than getting your TV fixed, because I've been recruited as a newsreader on the local station's English news show. Don't ask me why, all I know is it wasn't my hair. At the audition they said it was too boring, and fluffed it up with 'Lady Di' feathery side flicks.

So there I was sat behind the news desk, scrolling through the autocue as I read the same news item about 35 times, trying to avoid getting a glimpse of my face, which appeared simultaneously on numerous screens around the studio.

Between each take, the flamboyant editor would sashay into the room exclaiming, That was perfect. Very professional. You are a newsreader now. But, this time try to be more relaxeder." Somehow after all this, I got the job. Unfortunately it's only one day a week, so I have to keep my day job: shouting at children to stop kicking each other in the head while doing the hokey cokey.

Oh yeah... the kids. They're a bit like Chihuahuas that can talk, but much naughtier than Chihuahuas. Or maybe I've just never had 16 Chihuahuas in a room at the same time, and had to try and make them do the hokey cokey without killing each other.

Julian is one of my favourites, a tiny six-year-old with a big heart, in a class of 10-year old bullies. He seems to be the only person in China who realises I don't understand Chinese. Most people blab away, oblivious to my ignorance, and then when they cotton on to the fact I can't understand them, helpfully write it down in Chinese. But wee Julian cuts straight to the Marcel Marceau routines and drawings to communicate with me. During tea break a few weeks ago, he rushed into the staff room all-afluster and presented me with a crayon diagram depicting a ball, arrows and a window to fill me in on what had transpired since I'd left the classroom.

"At the audition they said my hair was too boring, and fluffed it up with 'Lady Di' feathery side flicks."

When the going gets tough, I try not to rely too heavily on the worryingly cheap beer (10p a can). With packs of smokes at around the same price, I'm resisting taking up smoking for as long as possible. The fact that I could be sitting here with a can of Double Happiness beer in one hand and a Double Happiness fag in the other is pretty hard to resist. Thankfully, I'm not even remotely tempted by the other cheap tipples like Rare Dark Glutinous Wine or Paddy Flower Sparrow Tonic Wine. I can even resist baijo; a rice wine that smells like dirty nappies available by the gallon at every corner store.

I did temporarily take up smoking last week. One of my colleagues decided to quit and go to Sweden, so we all went down to the beach with a bottle of rum to bid him farewell. It was all going well until we stumbled upon a dead body. I won't go into details except to say I had hysterics and had to take up smoking to calm down. I ended up staying up all night sitting in a rock pool, chain-smoking, talking with my departing co-worker, and watching the sunrise.

Then when we ran out of cigarettes we walked across a bridge to an island to the only awake people we could see; poor people who were collecting rubble to presumably sell to building sites or something for probably about one pence a bucket. They were so poor my heart started to bleed so I decided to give them money. They looked about as surprised as if... well, as if a soaking wet, drunk, barefoot, yellow-haired foreign woman had just handed them money at 6.30 am on an island. Proud folk; they would only accept it when I insisted it was 'a present'.

A few hours later I caught the bus to beautiful district of Yangshuo, and started having a post-traumatic episode in a battered bus with no suspension, speeding, weaving and honking its way through insane Chinese traffic. It was a sleeper, which meant I was lying on a very narrow bunk with a filthy old blanket in 40 degree heat on the sunny side of the bus, with no air-conditioning. I was afraid to drink water because I had no idea when or if there would be a toilet stop. I had a burning throat, stinging cuts, splinters and bruises all over my hands, arms and feet from walking through rock pools and thrashing through the bush on the island, and needless to say, was very hungover.

So it was four in the morning when I was shaken awake and tossed out on the streets of Yangshuo, at which time everything was shut except one hotel, which kindly agreed to let me curl up on the couch in the foyer for a few hours (but had no drinking water). When I awoke and saw the magical, mystical looking mountains I felt reborn.

In two days time I leave Yangshuo to start my job as China's newest TV anchorwoman. I'll keep you posted.


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