The other day, I got cast from afar for a advertisement for some kind of weightloss product. Being cast from afar is never a good thing.

I mean, its great in the sense that I didn’t have to waste any time actually going to an audition or costuming, but its bad in that you know it won’t be terribly high-end or professional. The pay for these gigs is never very good, but its still more money than you get for teaching English, and its “acting” so its vaguely worth the effort… or so I keep telling myself

This particular “gig” was sold to me in that I got to act like a host for a fake talk show where the guests were meant to discuss this magical weight loss product. This tactic is very common in China, as it conveys the image that this product is actually sold and used by people in another country (in this case, the UK). The truth of course being that its just a Chinese company that has a registered itself in the UK. Usually they will just dub over our voices, and they add in the sounds of an audience… so we don’t really have to say any lines in particular.

This, of course, was the best part of the day. I was working with a Russian girl, a Czech girl, and a Polish girl (yay) who were meant to be ex-fatties who had become beautiful lithe creatures with pale skin after using this magical cream. Right.

We mostly just spent the whole time making the appropriate hand motions, but just talking about far more amusing random topics. Like studying Chinese in Wudaokou (really it’d be better to try learning Korean up there), and the vulgar ridiculous ways that our characters had used the cream to lose all that weight… ha.

The girls were fab to work with, hilarious and creative. It was actually really hard for me to keep my face straight (I was meant to look inquisitive and interested as the host, not laughing so hard that I had tears running down my cheeks). But the challenge of keeping that bland reporter smile on my face during the filming was worth it.

However, the studio was totally un-heated, so I as I was freezing my butt off, my immune system finally gave away, and I started in on my annual bout of the Beijing plague. Once you get sick in Beijing, it is *so* hard to get healthy again. Ugh. Ginger tea it is for me!