The essay is by Ann Condi who has extensive experience working inside Chinese state media. You can read a previous essay by Condi on Danwei: Self-censorship: the 2,000 pound rhinoceros on the dining table.
One World, Whose Dream?
by Ann Condi
A teacher of mine called asking if I wanted to appear in a CCTV program celebrating the upcoming Beijing Olympic games. “This will be a very big spectacle,” he said. “Superstars like Jackie Chan, and some Olympic athletes will be there. Of course, they want some foreigners to participate.” He wasn’t sure what they wanted the foreigners to do, other than look foreign, but it sounded intriguing. An inside glimpse at how the Chinese media is hyping the Olympics – Sure, why not?
China television rarely broadcasts entertainment programs live, the notable exception being the annual CCTV Spring Festival Gala, for which the immediacy of live TV creates a strong sense of national unity. This Olympics program, called Bai Nian Yuan Meng, “A One Hundred Year Dream”, was also to be aired live, and like the Spring Festival show, it was a massive undertaking, prepared and rehearsed for months in advance, and executed with the complex logistical scope of a major military operation.
Thus, when I showed up for the first dress rehearsal I was fully expecting a gigantic extravaganza, but even so, what I saw knocked my socks off. Like everything about the 2008 Olympics, the production featured over-the-top glitter, sensory overload, and almost surreal excess. No square millimeter of visual space was wasted, and each nook and cranny of the stage vibrated with carefully-planned semiotic significance. Waves of dancers flooded the stage constantly, computer graphics imagery morphed hypnotically on the background panels, and extra musicians and dancers cavorted on tall platforms. It was the Olympic motto “Faster, Higher, Stronger” applied to a variety show format. The goal, it seemed, was to cram all of Chinese culture and the Olympic spirit into one 90-minute show: Peking Opera, the “Yellow River” Concerto, the hutong, the Olympic torch, the Olympic theme songs, kites, kids, kungfu, and kitsch (with Chinese characteristics), nothing was left out. And, of course, Chinese ethnic minorities, Xinjiang and Tibetan dancers represented in traditional costumed charm.
The cloying five Fuwa mascots were a constant presence, manifested in larger-than-life Disney style, bouncing and waving on the sidelines throughout the entire proceedings. (During breaks the enormous rubber Fuwa costumes would come off to reveal the sweating, exhausted young male dancers inside. It occurred to me that this was an apt metaphor for the Chinese Olympics as a whole – a cheery fantasy exterior powered by the sweat of anonymous, underpaid workers.)
The most overworked group of performers was the audience themselves, a hand-chosen group of participants who were required to attend each dress rehearsal to receive coaching on when and how to applaud, how to wave the various flags, props and pom-poms, and how to shout the Olympic slogans in perfect unison. A director in charge of the audience stood at the side and guided their actions, at times acting like a symphony conductor, at times like a tyrannical army drill sergeant.
For one of the sports-related songs, some of the foreigners were sprinkled into the ranks of the background dancers, who were all dressed in sexy, navel-baring Dallas Cowboy cheerleader outfits. Shaking their oversized pom-poms, they all joined in the bilingual refrain “Come on! Jia you!” (which merely left the native English speakers groaning, “Oh, come on!”)
The main foreign presence, however, was saved for the big finale, a schlocky operatic choral paean to the Olympic spirit, and the idea was to have the foreigners – all colors, all ages – mixed in with the Chinese and ethnic minorities in one big “One World, One Dream” harmony fest. The total number of performers was amassed on the stage, leaving hardly any room for us to stand. Our duties were simply to crowd into the throng at the big climax, do a majestic 180-degree turn to face the audience, wave an Olympic flag in one hand and hold a fake microphone in the other while lip-synching the words to the song. (We were not the only ones lip-synching. In fact, not a single singer on the program – which included mega-stars Jackie Chan, Han Hong, Sun Nan, Liu Huan, and Wei Wei – warbled a single note throughout the show. Every note was pre-recorded.)
Like the annual Spring Festival gala, the final taping took place over three days. Sunday night was a complete performance carried out for the purposes of shencha (“control, monitoring, censorship”), viewed exclusively by a small group of Party leaders, who sat emotionlessly scribbling comments and criticisms, all of which would be incorporated into the final performance. Monday night was an approved and finalized performance, to be recorded as a beibodai, “a back-up broadcast tape”. This version would be synched up, minute-by-minute, to the live broadcast, and in the case of performer no-shows, unsightly accidents, or politically incorrect incidents, the tape from the previous night could be punched in and substituted at any moment, with the TV audience none the wiser.
It was interesting to see to what extent the Party officials micro-managed the details of the performance. Following the first shencha, a set of recommendations and corrections came down from the censors, including a request that we foreigners not wear the white Olympic T-shirts we had been issued, but rather come decked out in our “native dress”. (“Native dress”? What did they mean, exactly? For example, what was my Canadian friend supposed to wear? A lumberjack outfit?) None of the various mandated revisions were based upon artistic or commercial decisions on the part of television professionals, but rather on the esthetic and political whims of this small group of Party bureaucrats.
Other condescending touches were added. Appearing on the show was a phenomenally popular Russian singer named Vitas, whose claim to fame is an almost impossible castrato-style high-C range. Having quite a following in China, he is one of the foreign performers invited to perform at the opening Olympic ceremonies. At the end of his number, the singer was coached to say “Wo ai ni Beijing. Nimen zhen pang!”, the last intended word bang (“great/awesome”) being intentionally mispronounced as pang (“fat”) resulting in the meaning “I love you Beijing. You are all fat!” This lame joke evidently fulfilled the obligatory stereotype of the cute foreigner who actually tries to speak Chinese.
The night of the live broadcast, as we took our places, the director of the show, frazzled and exhausted from lack of sleep, pleaded with the collected ensemble, “When the leaders come in tonight to watch the show, please, please be sure to give them a standing ovation!” And so, as the leaders were escorted in just before the 7:50 starting time, we all dutifully stood and applauded them. Relaxed and casually dressed, the group included Li Changchun, ranked fifth in the CCP Politburo Standing Committee and considered China’s propaganda chief, and Liu Yunshang, head of the “Spiritual Civilization” Steering Committee and head of the Propaganda Ministry. Also in attendance, sitting in the front row in his wheelchair, was Deng Pufang, Deng Xiaoping’s son.
The show began on schedule, and as program took its course, I couldn’t help but note the contrast between all this frenetic razzle-dazzle on the stage and the calm, dispassionate demeanor of the handful of leaders in the front row. What were they feeling? Were they nervous about the upcoming Olympic games? Proud of their role in China’s rapid development? Just enjoying the show? It was impossible to tell; their faces were blank. (CCTV cameramen have privately told me that one of their headaches during the taping of the annual Spring Festival Gala is that they are obliged to get a few good close-ups of the CCP leaders in the audience, but they can never catch them on camera with anything but a bored, passive expression.)
The only leader who seemed to be enjoying himself at all was Deng Pufang. Deng became a paraplegic in an incident at Peking University in 1968, in which he fell from a 3-story building during a struggle session. Now, 40 years later, what was he thinking of all this? Was he reflecting on all this science-fiction modernization made possible by his father, the beady-eyed pragmatist who had set China on a new economic course, while also ordering the bloody massacre in Tiananmen Square? Or was he just happy to be alive?
All this seemed so strange. Who was the audience here? It certainly wasn’t the “audience” of ordinary Beijingers in their color-coordinated shirts, since they were coached and rehearsed just as the performers were. This elaborately staged show was really for the benefit of just this handful of leaders. In China’s dynastic past, we know there were many extravagant performances in the imperial palace involving hundreds of singers and dancers performing energetically for an audience consisting of only the emperor and a few concubines. Was this really that much different?
What about the TV audience? Note that the show had been designed by producers and directors who are directly answerable to the State propaganda apparatus – which is essentially controlled by the very leaders in attendance that night. The artistic talents behind the show were creating their product, consciously or unconsciously, with this small number of leaders in mind. In essence, a small coterie of Party officials had ordered the show to be made, checked its content, ordered changes, tweaked it according to their tastes and agendas, and approved it for final broadcast. If you want to know why so much of Chinese TV is so vacuous, consider: An audience of a billion people were being treated to a variety show that basically reflected the esthetics and mindset of a tiny group of powerful oligarchs. Whether anyone really liked the finished product might be considered just an afterthought.
And finally, what about we foreign well-wishers, sitting comfortably in our seats wearing our “native dress”? We were not merely invited guests, whose only obligation was to be foreigners. In a sense we were foreigners playing the role of foreigners in a kind of elaborate political theater. And part of the function of our role was to convince the TV audience that this Olympic event was the fulfillment of the Chinese people’s “One-hundred Year Dream”. Though the vast majority of Chinese people are enthusiastic about the Games, the massive social disruption and inequality of the build-up to 2008 have left a residue of pain and discontent that programs like this are designed to gloss over. Should we have been helping them? As long as this handful of officials with vested interests is dictating the message, the Chinese people are not truly free to dream their own dreams, whether or not they might include the Olympics. And no matter what any of us foreigners who love China might think about our bit part in all this drama, it is worth asking: Were we making our own small contribution to the multicultural “One World, One Dream” goal, or were we merely being suckered into realizing the dreams of the small group of powerful people who control China?