Wednesday, July 6, 2011
What a luxurious morning! We don’t have to meet until 9AM in the lobby, so I slowly enjoy my breakfast. Today, the only thing on the agenda today is taping a couple of episodes of a game show against the local beauty contestants. Back on the bus and on our way to the current site of the TV studio. As you enter the building, it is dark and rundown. The lobby and hallways wreak of cigarettes. The girls are led into their dressing room, and the contestants who aren’t getting styled practice their walking, stop, turn, walk entrance. The Anhui Belles arrive quite a bit later and with food, soda, and cigarettes. By the way, there are no smoking signs plastered all over the dressing room. Can you imagine the fireball that would be produced should an open flame meet the amount of hairspray used in that dressing room? If not, let’s just say it would be very large.
It’s lunchtime by the time rehearsals are over. We eat at the cafeteria, but we have to circumnavigate the entire campus in order to get to lunch. It seems like there should be a shorter route to lunch, but we haven’t time to find a shortcut. A quick lunch brings us back to the studio in time for the girls to change and get backstage. First up to compete are Isabella Chen (Contestant #9), Angela Gao (Contestant #8), and Mei Shao (Contestant #11). Isabella raps for the talent portion of the competition. There are three more parts to the show, making a sentence from a random name, verb, and adjective, then there is a game of telephone charades where you pass along a question through only acting out the motions, and finally a swimsuit competition. Three judges make the decision to give the teams points based on their thoughts and feelings, purely subjectively. Even though I think we had a stronger team and far more intelligent contestants, the Anhui Belles won this first round.
I observed that a lot of the Anhui belles probably had work done, and later, it was confirmed by the belles themselves that they had breast augmentation and other work done. It seems a common practice for Chinese pageant contestants to have work done, so naturally, the Chinese beauty contestants would be spokespeople for the Hefei Gorgeous Reshaping Cosmetology Hospital whereas American beauty contestants would catch a lot of flack. Hopefully, the last few appearances won’t reflect poorly on the girls when they get back to the States because even though none of them have had any work done, just being photographed walking in or out of those hospitals can be taken completely out of context by the media.
Dinner was barely an instant before the next set of girls were up. This time, we have Ivy Hu (Contestant #4), Yufei Liu (Contestant #5), Jike Sun (Contestant #13), and Jasmine Hayter (Contestant #14). The talent portion was a stylized cha-cha for one by Jasmine who has been studying dance since the age of five. She was a crowd favorite. The Miss NY Chinese owned the second round against the Anhui Belles. It was such a great relief to know that the judges were finally realizing that the NYC gals weren’t just pretty faces. On the bus back to the hotel, Mr. Yip challenged the girls. Should the girls win again, he would match the prize money one for one.
I am looking forward to spending my day off in my room editing and posting. The other staffers are off to Jiu Hua Mountain for a hike and a little sightseeing. Let’s hope the ladies win both of tomorrow’s tapings!
Stereotype Rebel 