The foreigner experience in China

Reporting from Shanghai.

This is Karl. Karl is an actor, model, MC and runs his own entertainment consulting business. He blogs about all this as well. For example:

“In my experience, and (I seem to say this often) especially in China, that schedules are often floating and you spend many hours waiting for the next shot.

In
the last movie I was filming, we had days as long as 16 hours, with
only 2-3 hours of actual shooting. Unfortunately that is typical for
the industry in China. Though, there is always something fun you can
occupy yourself with. Some people have games, some books, or even
sleep. Once you have memorized your script many times over, there is
still a lot of time you have to practice your basket weaving.

Though the danger of immersing yourself in a book or some other
activity is that when you are called up for your scene, you have to
quickly get back into character and remember the lines and the scene.”

Blog: PlanetKarl

Reporting from Fuqing.

This is Ben. Ben is American. Ben taught English for a year and a half. Ben worked a month at a barber shop. Ben sometimes writes stuff for Pacific Ethnography and Orbus Investor. He blogs about some of this as well. For example:

“What I found the most discouraging from a humanistic perspective was
that with the possible exception of Jiang who gets creative pleasure
out of designing hairstyles, I can honestly say that nobody in the
barber shop likes their job. Even Mr. Zheng, if presented with the
right opportunity, would leave the industry if he could. There is an
overwhelming sense of lack of self-actualization, and many of my
coworkers view their job as pointless, literally.”

Blog: Ben’s Blog… 小本的博客

Link credits:
1) Danielle Engelman at the Long Now Foundation.
2) EastSouthWestNorth & Ken Erickson from Pacific Ethnography.