Posted this on my Sina Twitter account and got some *very* amusing responses… best one of course is the Oreo reference.

最近我去内蒙呼和浩特主持了《第十一届中国·呼和浩特昭君文化节》的活动，去年我也主持了这个晚会。这次让我感觉印象比较深，更加喜欢中国少数民族的传统文化，我特别的喜欢晚会上他们唱的蒙族歌曲、跳蒙族的欢快舞蹈。

当天晚上表演了很多地地道道的蒙古舞蹈，很多是我从来没有看到过的，他们穿着非常漂亮、五颜六色的蒙古服装跳舞。他们的蒙古舞蹈是那样的美丽，和我们平时看到的舞蹈非常的不一样，也和我以前知道的完全不一样。如果你看他们的舞蹈可以感觉到蒙古人的热情、奔放、豪爽。晚会上还有唱了很多的歌曲，有很流行的歌曲，也有一些蒙古歌曲。但是我觉得最好听的还是很帅的蒙古小伙子唱的歌曲，不管是唱蒙古歌曲还是流行歌曲，你都可以感觉到非常的不一样。听他们唱歌好像感觉到你站在一望无际的大草原上一样，非常的舒服也很难忘记。

在后台我一有机会就会和他们聊天，请他们教我跳蒙古舞蹈，那些姑娘和小伙子都很好很热心的教我。还有他们蒙古的名字让我一直记不住，在蒙古生活的汉族人也很难记住，因为我是老外记不住也不能算是不礼貌的吧！我自己很喜欢内蒙，也和内蒙古有很多的缘分我有好多很好的朋友是内蒙人，还有我的干妈也是内蒙人。就想起中国人经常说的一句话“上辈子我就是一个地地道道的内蒙人” 所以我对内蒙感觉是那样的熟悉和热爱。内蒙也好像是我的第二个老家一样。也有很多的活动机会让我经常来呼和浩特看看我的“第二个老家”

在呼和浩特让我印象最深的还有蒙古美食，你可以大口吃肉大口喝酒。（虽然我不能喝那么多的酒）所以现在我每次去呼和浩特的时候，我都吃很多很多的菜和肉，回北京以后我再开始减肥呵呵…. 但是这也让我觉得自己很幸福有机会吃到这么美味的蒙古菜。这里不像在北京，每个人都是那么热情好客，让你觉得像是回到自己的家里一样没有陌生感。我个人一直觉得中国有很多的少数民族文化，他们的文化是那么的特别，中国应该多多的保护他们的文化。这样的文化如果慢慢丢失了太可惜了，应该有更多的机会让全世界的人知道他们的文化。如果有机会我希望自己可以帮助他们宣传他们的特色文化，让更多的人知道并了解。

The hair stylist was having waaay too much fun with my hair.

I was having fun.

(but then again, what girl doesn’t like “makeeng love to zee camerah”?)

So I recently caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror while waiting for the elevator before another one of these gala shows I was hosting in Inner Mongolia and couldn’t help giggling at myself. I’m used to people looking at my strangely (what, a whitey speaking Chinese?!) that I guess it hadn’t occurred to me just how incredibly jawsome my backstage look really is. So what ingredients are required to create the perfectly boho Elyse Ribbons look?

~ Carolina hoodie (go Tarheels!)
~ a gorgeous hand-stitched Qipao
~ Starbucks thermos (thanks Momo!)
~ papery Chinese hotel slippers
~ sparkly blue eyeliner
~ enough hairspray to kill a kitten

* theatrical thuggery not included

The other hosts were all appropriately uncomfortable in their full getups, though I have to admit that my co-host Liu Qin was amusingly in his purple velvet suit for the night, which worked well with my qipao. And yes, he had his name embroidered onto the left pocket of the suit with rhinestones… designed the suit himself. I love China.

Last night I went to see “The Last Struggle” at the National Theater (aka: The Egg) with the lovely Viola and really really enjoyed myself. Sure, there were places I could critique the play — the biggest of which was when they turned on the house lights about halfway through to film the Senior Chinese Official, (Senior Chinese official hails anti-corruption stage drama) which really killed the mood, but in the end everyone got back into the show without too much time passing. I’m going to write up a proper review at some point, I promise! but until then… just wanted to share the random photos above from the Henan shack restaurant that we went to for post-show dinner near Houhai.

Best part of the evening: biking past the throngs of tourists at Tiananmen on my hot pink bike in a bright red qipao to arrive looking far more glamorous than most of the other theater patrons. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t pull that off in NYC or London (but maybe Paris?). Yet one of the many reason that I Heart Beijing

I’d like to blame Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs on my latest project acceptance: a cartoon! After watching the cheerily cheeky aforementioned film, I thought ‘Gee, wouldn’t it be fun to be in a cartoon? And SO much easier than filming an actual movie!’ and well, here I am!

Got a phone call when I got back to Beijing from Shanxi and it was all rather serendipitous in that they weren’t just looking for voices, but for someone to translate and re-work the script… and (here’s the best part!) to direct the voices! It was great to focus on voices. Normally there are so many other things that I think about as a director, but it was really enlightening to really feel those emotive differences in actors’ voices. It was also great to work with some of my favorite actors (all of whom have worked with Cheeky Monkey before — small world!).

I did the voice for the nerdy engineer rabbit Jingjing and then the uppity alpha female Princess. Two extremes of Elyse, so it wasn’t hard for me to create some voices for these two characters. I don’t have any clips just yet, the promo episode we did was for some festival/competition in France, but if the show gets picked up and fully created, it would be a really fun project, and I’ll definitely get some clips up for you then.

Spent this morning at a study in the northern outback of Beijing’s Haidian District filming a silly little commercial for the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China 工商银行.

I think I’m meant to be a sexy secretary and/or corporate executive (is there a difference?). I mean, from a costuming perspective, of course. Ha. But still I realized that I need to get some fun corporate office wear – what with my gig at Huatuo as a VP of International Affairs (thats what my card says!). Should try to do some shopping at some point… (for me, clothes shopping is work, ugh)

Number one reason for me to continue to work out and try to keep a svelte figure: I get to avoid wasting time on costume fittings if I can fit into Chinese clothes Mind you, I’ll never achieve my dreams of being a hiphop/rap star due to my lack of a proper badonkadonk* but alas, one can’t have it all…

I spent most of the shoot in the traditional “text messaging” stance while they were trying to convince the other models to pretend to be happy when the camera was on them. They should have provided us with coffee (it was like, 7am on a Friday after all) but all in all the shoot went really smoothly and was over pretty quickly.

There were also some other really cool laowai involved with the shoot, there were models from Spain, Latin America, Africa, Pakistan, Korea and of course America. Most of whom spoke some Chinese, which is exciting, as I might have access to more putonghua speaking laowais for a new Cheeky Monkey play (its sad, but I have so little access to talented actors who actually speak Chinese that its quite limiting to my creative flow)

我今天上午拍了工商银行的广告（就是一小部分）。我在里面扮演一个职业女性。正好我前几个星期看了《杜拉拉升职记》角色研究的很好，哈哈。你们觉得我像吗？

我这个项目里也很开心认识别的会说中文的外国美女。正好下次准备玩皮猴子戏剧社的新剧我可以考虑更多的外国角色。一个是罗马尼亚的，另外是韩国的。她们都挺好的，当然还不如我的《老外看点》的同事韩国大美女赵守镇，呵呵。

瞧，最近我演了很多不同的角色。比方有职业女性，妈妈，中国媳妇，英国人，美国游客，主持人，留学生，等等。我很开心在不同的角色里边扮演不同的人。我很想演一位警察或者杀手。我想哪个更酷！你们觉得呢？

*[edit] pardons for previously misspelling badonkadonk as bedunkadunk, a horrible, egregious error, thanks to the help of Bokane I have saved my reputation and corrected the spelling. Thank you and now back to your regularly scheduled program

I haven’t really had a chance to post much during this film shoot… not that I should have expected otherwise, but still, there’s always the hope that maybe I won’t be so exhausted that I might be able to write down my thoughts and share pictures and whatnot. But no. Sooo tired. Always.

The filming schedule of 7am-1am on consecutive days does manage to suck my soul of all desire to write. But I just thought I’d share a couple random photos It turns out all those years of random sewing (cross-stitching for the most part) has finally come in handy career-wise in that the ‘mending’ I did during some of the scenes looked vaguely authentic, ha.

And while the costumes are so hot that they create a mega sauna effect (how I long to be on a big-budget enough project some day to have costumes made of breathable fabrics!) this has actually for the most part been a really good shoot. I’m really looking forward to seeing the end result (though I’m not sure if there will be English subtitles available, so maybe we could record an audio track Mystery Science Theater 3000 style to include, haha). Anyhoo, I’m gonna get some sleep while I can… toodles!

这是我在运城拍摄《李家大院》布兰切的照片。剧组的人很好，有几个帮我偷偷拍剧照。大家也看出来我在扮演一个孕妇，这是我第一次享受大肚子的感觉。我是不是以后要生孩子我现在不知道，但是做妈妈的感觉很幸福。

你们看我的服装怎么样？像不像一百年前英国的贵族？穿这么复杂的衣服当然挺好玩，但是很热。超级热。我一天最少得喝十几瓶水。正好可以排毒。哈哈。

这是一个真实的故事的电影。当然剧本被改变了一点，但是大部分还是非常真实的。大家如果有机会推荐你们去参观一下李家大院，非常漂亮的建筑风格。而且那边的导游都很热心。有几个可爱的小闺女也在剧中扮演不同的角色。

小吃也超级好吃，尤其是凉菜和醋是我的最爱。:)

～ 布兰切 （柳素英）