Having Fun All The Time

I am trying to think of how to begin describing the evening I just had, and nothing is really coming to me.

I think I have to start by saying that in this town in China I have become something of a celebrity. And I’ll just spare you the details about my ambiguous thoughts and opinions of that fact and say that it seems to be irrevocably true, and that I did nothing to earn it except be foreign, tall, of average attractiveness and the capacity for saying “yes” to even perhaps daunting propositions.

Tonight’s proposition was made to me about three months ago, when I went to one of the administrative leaders of this school to ask for reimbursement for my visa trip to Hong Kong, which after visa, transport and hotel costs totaled just under $1,000 USD. He quickly granted the reimbursement and then added, at the end of our meeting, that he would like me to perform the Chinese song “Childhood” (”童年”) on “Teacher’s Day” later this year. I had already once performed the song at a small performance my students had given the previous semester (although I suffered horrible stage fright, forgot half of the lyrics and treated the audience to an earful of microphone feedback), so I quickly agreed without asking for details. The man had just agreed to pay back 1 large that I had more or less kissed goodbye forever, so I was apt to agree to about anything.

By now, if you’ve followed my blog at all, you know that I was in for a lot of surprises when I finally did learn those minor details. It turns out that I was signing up to sing the song in front of an audience of teachers from all around our county who will be gathering in our capitol city performance hall in September. I would also be the only performance representing our college of approx 10,000 students, some of who are very gifted singers (at the first singing competition I attended here, I was moved to tears — there are seriously beautiful singers in the art department here).

So…that’s in September. Tonight was the warm-up, a performance at the college’s end-of-the-year bash when some of the best student singers and dancers perform in the college’s auditorium…again, seriously talented, devoted singers and dancers, troupes of 20 students doing really advanced dance and opera-style Chinese singing…and me.

Luckily, there were 15 dancers on stage to distract the audience from me. But I still had to learn a 4-minute Chinese song, not forget the words, and learn how to dance/do hand movements and stage walking and stuff along with the dancing students…all this while focusing on not choking and getting warbly-voiced and stone-faced in front of the school audience…which was at least 500…I don’t really know how many in all.

The good thing about this performance was that I had professional help. Since I was singing to a choreographed dance this time, the dance teacher instructed me on how to stand on stage (not hunched), how to walk on stage (big steps, not measly nervous ones), and how to accompany my singing with gestures that go along with the meaning of the words…and stuff.

At first these suggestions were exasperating, because it’s hard enough to remember the words to a real Chinese song, let alone doing choreographed steps and motions and stuff like that. It’s just not something I’m used to. And there is/was also my cynicism about the whole affair that Ihad to get over. I had to come to grips with the fact that Ihad agreed to do this, and that I could not go at it half-heartedly and make an embarrassment of myself again in front of hundreds of people. When the teacher/coach said stand up straight, I had to do it, when she reminded me that I wasn’t smiling and my eyes had no emotion, I had to fix it, when she asked me to wag my finger and shake my head, I had to do that, too.

These things, in any normal context of my life, I find/would have found impossible to do, but then I realized that all the other performers (all students, which makes me kind of weirdly the only non student on stage at the end of the show) are giving it their all and having a good time and actually putting on a damn good show, and I had to do it. So I worked with the dancers and the teacher, we practiced the song maybe 20 times, and then finally like an hour before the performance we had it, and I felt good with it.

I realized while standing backstage waiting to go on that the only way not to go insane with stage fright was to jump up and down and do jumping jacks and do the most ridiculous movements possible. This actually really helped me get the energy to have fun with the performance, and then a second later I heard the announcers shouting my Chinese name and I marched on stage and stared straight into the blinding stage lights and shouted “Hello everybody!” in Chinese into the microphone.

This time it went much better. I tripped over the lyrics a little once but quickly recovered and other than that it was smooth. I did not collide with the students as I had done in rehearsals, I’m pretty sure I remembered to smile most of the time, and I was helped greatly by getting a chance to really practice and getting good feedback and seeing myself performing in the mirrors in the practice room and stuff like that. And after the show, when people congratulated me on the performance, they really seemed to mean it (they congratulated me last time, but it was obvious that they were just being nice).

And then afterward my liaison told me that that was actually just a rehearsal for the big show in September, which I sort of knew already. So yet again in September, I will be doing something that would be completely unimaginable at home. And even though I am making a resolution to severely cut back on agreeing to appear in public performances here, I at least think I am going to enjoy my next slice of completely unearned stardom.