By Ashleigh Au

“It’s harder for foreigners not to be on ICS than to be on ICS,” a friend professed to me, referring to the International Channel Shanghai. True, I thought, reflecting on the number of expats I know who have appeared on Chinese television. His remark reminded me of my student years in Beijing, when casting personnel would visit our university campus.

Struggling exchange students were easily persuaded to sit in live audiences, serve as extras in Chinese traditional costume or Victorian dress, and sometimes even be a foreign face in footage of industry conventions. For a couple of hundred yuan per day, making a silent on Chinese TV sure beat tutoring English!

This instant super-star attention, which some expats find uncomfortable, is relished by others who enjoy the novelty of sudden celebrity status. It is a culture shock that in China the average unlikely guy next door can be regarded as potential television talent by virtue of his ordinary “non-Chinese” looks.

The trend of more foreigners appearing on Chinese television reflects an increasingly globalized China and the reality of an increasing number of expats living here today. But, as the child of a multicultural North American society, I have often pondered the portrayal of foreigners in the Chinese media. Are they really portrayed as the guys next door, or do they come across as creations of the Chinese imagination that exist in artificial dialogues and popular laowai narratives?

When I first came to China years ago, watching foreigners on television clearly evoked the scenes I read and memorized in my Chinese textbooks. Mary and John come to China, they find China exotic and enticing, they are blown away by the modernity, are scared of the swerving bicycles, and entranced by Beijing opera. They are foreigners that are dying to learn how to make dumplings on Chinese New Year, climb mountains on Chongyang Festival (a traditional Chiese holiday), and cannot stop marveling at the epic 5,000 years of Chinese civilization.

As a student, I remember thinking this was a far cry from the alcohol-guzzling Sanlitun (one of the most popular bar streets in Beijing) festivities otherwise known as “weekends in Beijing.” What happened to the more interesting dialogues that occurred between Chinese and foreigners everyday, like the cultural clashes and humorous mishaps and friendships that erupted spontaneously?

Undeniably entertaining to Chinese audiences are programs that highlight laowai competing and flaunting their Chinese language abilities. I recall seeing various shows over the years in which strapping Africans boys belt out Chinese hit songs and delicate Eastern European beauties exhibit enviable Chinese calligraphy.

As entertaining and impressive as these acts may be, they beg us to question whether Chinese audiences ever get tired of watching foreigners learn to do things the Chinese way. Doesn’t it get a little clownish after a while? A little repetitive?

Recently, on channels like the ICS, foreigners of various backgrounds and nationalities have been appearing in different roles, participating in round-table discussions on various topics. Channel surfing, I have noticed varying depictions of foreigners in Chinese soap operas as well, where foreign actors have Chinese speaking roles and tangible personalities.

In one television series I was captivated by an African actor who played a college student, bickering in fluent Chinese with his classmates. In another series I was enthralled to notice a “German” who challenges Chinese family values by courting a young Chinese girl – in this story the girl is already married, making the melodrama all that much juicier.

The latest TV phenomenon to take China by storm is Shanghai Rush, which is monumental in that laowai really appeared candid, up-close and personal. English broadcasters seem to be attuned to this sensitivity. For Shanghai Rush, ICS hired a production company comprised of New York University grads to edit and produce the series, indicating the station’s efforts to assimilate Western-style entertainment and cater to English-speaking audiences. Foreigners who have the opportunity to be featured in the Chinese media are often surprised to discover how much space we have to be ourselves.

English-language television may just be the catalyst for the increasing presence of foreign characters that in turn communicate a realistic mosaic of laowai images to Chinese audiences.

The growing presence of the laowai of all kinds in the Chinese media reflects the reality that expats, like immigrants everywhere, are working their way into the fabric of modern Chinese society and are gradually developing a presence, with personality to boot.

Ashleigh Au is a Shanghai-based freelance writer