Tonight’s the last night, get up to 798 and catch the show if you can!

Today was the first day of filming of 《李家大院》[ Li Family Home? ] near Yuncheng, Shanxi Province and *wow* it was a gorgeous set! And by set, really I mean, ancient and incredibly well preserved city! I’m too tired to write much now, suffice it to say that at least I get to amuse myself by wandering around the city/museums while I’m not in wardrobe or filming any scenes. Definitely keeps the history geek within me pleased

A journalist friend who used to interview actors for his column recently commented to me that most stars were incredibly dumb and his theory was that anyone who was intelligent would have a hard time sitting around in cow-chewing-cud-mode all day. That might be true for lots of actors (and certainly a large portion of the film actors I know!) but certainly not for all. One of the best things for me about filming is that I get an opportunity to explore a whole new region and look at things in a very different way than a tourist would have the chance to. Mind you, this has only been the first day of filming. I doubt I will be in such a sunny disposition after day 18, ha.

Last night was… lemme see… how did I translate it on the show? Um, yes, it was The 11th Annual ZhaoJun Cultural Festival’s Opening Ceremony “The Heavenly Grasslands” Performance. Yay Chinglish! Returning for the second time, I did the English hosting for NMTV’s Mongolian version of the lunar new year (which happens in the Summer) with Chinese news anchor legend Bai Yansong and three other hosts from NMTV.

It was an incredibly fun show, and it was great to be invited back for a second year The best part of it of course was that half of the cast from the Shanghai Expo musical “The Promise” were also in this show! It felt like a big family reunion, and it was particularly funny because most of them were in the show last year as well, but never put it together that the Chinese-speaking blonde from last year and I were one and the same, ha. This year I didn’t really get many good pictures from the show (I really should bring an assistant for these events!) but I’ve got a couple wacky/random heying (group photo) shots. My favorite two shots (seen below) are equally fun/wacky, but the little girls were just *hysterical*. There were a whole gaggle of them in the makeup room and when they spotted me they all came over and stood right behind me and discussed whether or not my hair was a wig, and if I was a real laowai. As one of them suggested another pull my hair to find out, I pointed out to them that its not polite to pull people’s hair, to which they all ran away screaming. They sheepishly came back a few minutes later and asked if they could touch my hair. So adorable. During the whole of the rehearsal and final show, they would shout out a big “HELLO” in unison any time I walked by. Adorableness.

And of course, now I have a fab new profile pic for facebook, ha Ooh, which reminds me: if you aren’t already a “fan” of Cheeky Monkey on facebook, you should rectify that. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Beijing/Cheeky-Monkey-Theater/6619376027

Its been great to be back in Hohhot, though its been a bit of a whirlwind tour to say the least. Upon arrival I immediately had to rush off to the stadium to meet with the other hosts and the director to go through our scripts for that evening’s rehearsal. Its *incredibly* rare to have foreigners presenting on live TV in China, and the head of the TV station shared with me today that there was a bit of a hubbub over the fact that they got an American to be the English emcee, but its a lot easier to defend their choice this year, what with the Shanghai Expo show and everything. I’m practically Mongolian (thats a good thing, right?)

So… after going through the lines (and completely re-writing their English) I headed back to the hotel to go for a quick run and shower, then back for the full dress rehearsal, where I discovered lots of my Promise musical cohorts. Afterwords was the ridiculously long meeting to discuss issues post-rehearsal (the most interesting of which was the political leader Ms Yun who pointed out that its all right that the tv audience enjoys the show, but they mustn’t forget about the live audience in the stadium — which included *every* mayor from all over Inner Mongolia!). Gotta luv last minute changes to a show based on politics! Though, personally I was in agreement with her, as its silly to perform in front of a live audience and never really get a chance to connect with them.

Fortunately, my friends being performers, are all mostly night owls, and I met up with a couple of them for some delicious lamb and beer and noodles and happily ate away the rest of the night. Which might normally be a bad thing, but not when you’re high on performance adrenaline.

Even better, the next morning I awoke to a text message from my friend at People’s Daily to inform me that my first column for them had been printed in today’s paper. With a circulation of more than three million, well, I mean, wow! It was exciting, so I had to google it (since I didn’t have a chance to go out and get a paper) to see how much they had edited out. Not much, but maybe I’m so used to self-censorship with my CRI radio show Laowai Kandian that I was careful when writing, hehe. The freaky thing of course was that while I know this paper is the Chinese government’s mouthpiece, when I saw the CPC hammer and sickle website show up as well, well… yeah. McCarthy has gotta be turning in his grave I’m the first American to write for the paper, w00t!

Due to Norton and other such anti-virus software programs, I no longer link to Chinese news sites simply because there is such a prevalence of nasty buggy things, so I’ve pasted the links below (just in case you can read Chinese!)

http://world.people.com.cn/GB/57507/12162150.html － People’s Daily
http://theory.people.com.cn/GB/12160212.html — Communist Party News Site

我的第一次写中国报纸的栏目！而且是《人民日报》

中国舞蹈的神奇魅力（环球走笔）
柳素英（美国）

　　我是一名地地道道金发碧眼的美国女孩，我来北京已经8年了。认识我的人都知道，我是一个喜欢搞笑幽默的“顽皮猴子”，所以我创办的小戏剧社也叫“顽皮猴子”。尽管以前经常在一些英文报刊上发表文章，但这是我第一次给中文报纸写文章。我觉得给报纸写文章是一件比较严肃的事情，为这篇文章我可是“绞尽脑汁”。

　　我对中国文化特别感兴趣，但还不是特别了解，如果我说错了什么希望大家可以原谅。我从小喜欢跳舞，踢踏舞、芭蕾舞、爵士舞等我都学过。在我看来，肢体语言和话语同样重要，肢体语言是跨越国界的。最初学中文的时候，我一直误以为“武术”是“舞术”，当然中国的武术也可以看成是一种舞蹈艺术。我曾编写过一部话剧叫做《绿眼睛识黑汉字》，里面用了很多舞蹈肢体语言来展示汉字神奇的魅力。

　　中国舞蹈的历史非常有意思，比如唐代的《十部乐》综合艺术舞蹈，上世纪50年代的《宝莲灯》将古典舞融入戏剧舞蹈。我特别喜欢新中国的舞蹈，比如用京剧艺术和经典的芭蕾舞蹈表演的《红色娘子军》，我一直都想有机会学习一下。

　　在2008年北京奥运会之前，我策划了很多小型俱乐部的演出活动。很多老板最初都想做“现代化、国际化”的舞蹈，一点中国元素都不要，连舞蹈演员都希望全是外国人。我每次都竭力争取保留中国元素，因为我觉得很多外国人到中国来正是希望看到中国的文化。中国的舞蹈演员更能体现中国元素，譬如她们身穿清代服装举着雨伞跳舞时，就像绽放的花朵一样美丽。非常可惜的是，我发现中国大部分舞蹈演员在30岁之前就“退居二线”，或者结婚后就不再跳舞。在美国，很多舞蹈演员30多岁时还继续跳舞，结婚对舞蹈生涯也没有任何影响。另外，美国舞蹈演员在跳舞的同时也学习很多其他的东西。我发现许多中国舞蹈演员只学习舞蹈，这样往往容易成为“花瓶”。不过，曾有一位舞蹈演员告诉我，很多女孩只是假装“花瓶”，其实她们都很聪明。所以我不是批评中国舞蹈演员的气质，而是觉得市场留给她们的空间太小。

　　我非常喜欢在公园里跳舞的中国老人。他们围着录音机翩翩起舞，有的跳着优雅的探戈、华尔兹，有的扭着喜气洋洋的秧歌。跳舞可以活动身体的各个部位，让老人心情舒畅，还给了他们结识新朋友的机会。我常看见穿着各种鲜艳衣服的老太太们，和着音乐扭秧歌，旁边还有很多老大爷在伴奏，我从他们的笑容中感受到幸福。而在美国，老人退休后一般就把自己的房子卖掉，搬到南部一些温暖、安静的地方，社区周围住的几乎都是老年人，大家很有规律地早睡早起。尽管美国老人常常跑步或打高尔夫，但我觉得这些锻炼并不适合老年人，也没有给他们创造社交的机会。所以我看到中国老年人的养生之道后，就想把他们的经验带回美国，让美国的老年人也可以享受到身心健康的幸福生活。

http://world.people.com.cn/GB/57507/12162150.html

And just in case you aren’t yet on the email list, go to the CMT website here and subscribe: http://www.cheekymonkeytheater.com/email/email.html

In further randomness, I was amused when I saw this headline in Vanity Fair: Rob Corddry Believes “Fear of Clowns” is Not a Real Thing. My first response was “Hello, yes, of course clown-phobia is real, I’ve got it, which is probably why I have a sick fascination with Peking Opera!” but then I read the article and discovered a fun little web tv series. I don’t know if it can compare with Dr Horrible, but here’s hopin! My only complaint is that its only available in the US ;p But, hopefully there will be torrents of it up soon

For those of you in the States: Childrens Hospital

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现在中国的外国人大概分为两部分人：长期居住在中国和来中国旅游的游客。当然大家到中国来旅游都喜欢到旅游大商场买东西，如丝绸服装、毛泽东雕 像以及高仿路易威登皮包等。

我在中国居住了很久，所以我对这些旅游购物不是很感兴趣，很少去这些地方。我现在和长期住在北京的中国人一样有自己固定的购物场所—— 当然不是旅游商场。

礼品与服装，小店与网购最省事

说实话并不是我不喜欢毛泽东雕像或者迷你型兵马俑(上面的图片，是 我以前使用过的道具–小战士之一)，去一些旅游商场实际上是一个很大的麻烦，需要和商家讨价还价。因为我是白人，他们总是看我的肤色，告诉我一个可笑的 高价格，我试图解释我是一个在北京呆了很久的中国通。我在中国工作、赚钱、交税，这意味着我是不能被欺骗的！哈哈。

一般来说，我的大部分朋友喜欢去一些艺术精品小店购物，比如一件漂亮的手工旗袍店或者是古怪的T恤衫(如南锣鼓巷的创可贴8的T恤小店 就很受欢迎)。 而一些生活中的小东西我经常在Joyo.com这个网站购买，因为我不需要去亲自去选择这个东西，他们就可以送货上门再付款，不合适还可以退货换货，很方 便，而且价格和信用都很好。但是我很少在淘宝网上买东西，因为它很复杂很麻烦，有时你无法支付就不能看到东西。我真的不希望别人知道我的银行信息。

买食品，选老外杂货店

外国人在这里购物买食品，有一个完全独立的地方。就像在美国华人街的中国杂货店，在中国有特别的老外杂货店，哈哈哈哈。尤其是在北京有 几个像绿叶子和婕妮璐的地方。这些地方都是很伟大的，他们有很多进口的东西，像谷物、草药茶、奶酪、葡萄酒和很多外国零食。大部分的老外都很喜欢到那里购 物。

也有一些大型超市也会有一些各国进口食品的东西，例如家乐福等。我每一次就到婕妮璐购物，可以买到一些老外的东西，很难想象如果没有这 些杂货店会怎么样！

我喜欢做饭尤其是烘烤。中国食品是太棒了，但是不管你走多远，都永远无法离开你真正的根。我喜欢做自己国家的食物(我可以向你保证，这 完全不同于麦当劳或者肯德基)，很多西方的食品在烘烤时需要特殊的成分。此外还有美味的草药配料和做饭时需要的香料和酱料，这些肯定都是老外的厨房必需的 东西。

我是那么的爱做饭，最喜欢的社交活动就是在我的公寓搞一个宴会。 在中国大多数的美国人，如果只是两个人做饭就有点枯燥，最好能有6-8个人在一起，是多么的开心，哈哈。说起这些购物的话题也提醒了我，今晚我要去老外的 杂货店买一些我的晚餐了！ 再见 ！

http://gb.cri.cn/27824/2010/07/06/3785s2910926.htm