National Debut: A Very Unexpected & Awkward Situation

I have been waiting to write this post because I hadn't been able to get access to all the videos of our appearance on National television in China via CCTV until now.

I am not sure if you read my post In the Wake of Nanjing: Inbetween Places awhile back about news reporters and journalists coming to our apartment, but apparently our interviews and media coverage - which we thought just stayed in Nanchang - went national and was played all over China during the beginning of Spring Festival. I didn't really believe such a thing would happen; however, my first day teaching back at school revealed that exactly that had happened.

On my first day of class, all my students kept on telling me that they saw me on CCTV with excited voices and smiles on their faces. It was then that I believed it might be possible that our interviews might have gone further than Jiangxi. I probably should have seen this coming back in Chiang Mai, Thailand when Jodi brought pictures of us all over the front pages of the Nanchang daily news (below).

As you can see from the photo above, I am on the left with my team to the right. The funny thing is that I thought THAT was ridiculous and surely couldn't be surpassed by anything else that had happened. Well, that was until I saw the video below....

The video begins by showing other foreigners in various places around China and then seems to do a special little feature on our team. Mind you, my guess is as good as yours since the entire clip is in Chinese. This brings me to the reason I labeled my blog National Debut: A Very Unexpected & Awkward Situation. It was at this point that CCTV decided that it would be a good idea to air the video of me speaking in Chinese, which - in my mind - shows me butchering the language. Notwithstanding the fact that I was reading pinyin off a piece of paper being held in front of the news reporter's face. Oh well.

Below is another video from a local news station in Jiangxi.

I guess it just goes to show you that when living in China anything is possible, especially if you are a foreigner. Of course, our team has been laughing about this all week. Each day has been the same for them as me: Students coming up to you with faces bright and shining and saying "Teacher, I saw you on CCTV!".

Well, that's a wrap. All and more than you could have possibly thought would have happened to me in China.