Xuchang Building Openhouse

My one minute of fame. I basically got paid to hold a ribbon for one minute for being white. Hooray for being white in China.

When I first got to China, I met a girl while buying a phone card. Her name is Susan (though I think she has changed it, and she uses another name now... I will continue to call her Susan though). Susan has more or less created her own business over having a network of.... I will say "models" (aka white people), on her phone. She has asked me to do a few various gigs since I have been here. I would have to say this last one was by far the easiest!

So on Wednesday, I got a text from Susan asking if I could do something on Saturday (texts are always vague). After asking about details, I was told it was for an open house on Saturday morning in Xuchang (a city about an hour and a half south of where I live in Zhengzhou). After she told me that my girlfriend Loida could come along, I agreed to do the gig.

We met up at a bus station Saturday morning at 6:20. Because we were a bit late, when we got the the bus, we were the last ones there. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) the bus driver had little stools for us to sit in between the isles in the bus. Yay! Definitely not the most comfortable hour and a half bus ride I have ever been on.

It is always fun to for me to go to any city outside of Zhengzhou. My initial response is always the same "oh; it would be much better to live here than in Zhengzhou!" We rode to a part of town with a bunch of buildings under construction, then entered the only building not under construction.

At this point none of us really knew what was going on other than it was an open house of sorts and that we would have to do something (not really sure what). Once we got to the place, they just put us in the room to wait.

After waiting for about an hour or so, they had us go outside and wait a bit more. Eventually they put us on a stage and had us all hold a ribbon. We were on the stage for about the total of one or two minutes. Pretty easy gig if you ask me.

This is us waiting outside just after the ribbon cutting. On the very left is me. Next to me is a guy from Ukraine. The girls in the middle are from Brazil, and the girl on the end (right) is from Russia (I think).

They had a couple guys in parasails flying around. I think their gig was a bit cooler than mine!

You know something is cool when even Spider man stops to look (at the paragliders).

These are some of the girls that came over with us on the bus. I think there job is as models, the fake play in a stringed sextet. I didn't get a good view, but apparently, they look pretty convincing. They are wired up and everything. I only assume the gig is faked because they had a cello and guitar player, but I did not hear either in any of the songs.... also I am quite sure none of them tuned their instruments.

Does the hair look familiar?

It is a heart!

After we came in from the ribbon cutting, they had us go back inside and wait. Eventually they had us come out again to pose with cars. When we did the poses, they had a few photographers do video and photos of us. Probably no more than five minutes. After that we were supposed to pose for longer to let people take pictures of us... me and the other guy kind of just stopped because people really only wanted pictures of the girls anyhow.

Pretty sweet gig. It took the entire morning with travel and waiting, but actual "work" time was only about 30 minutes at the most, for which I got paid 700 RMB (About 115 US dollars).

These are the white girls that came to the gig. The girl on the right is from Russia and the others are from Brazil. The girls from Brazil are going to college here learning Chinese (at least I think... I didn't really talk to any of them).

These are the Chinese models. The basically spent all the time waiting taking pictures like this.

Me and one of the fancy cars. Most of the cars were quite dirty... it is hard to keep things in China clean with all the construction constantly going on.

This guy was from Ukraine. I talked to him quite a bit. He has lived in China for a while and all he does for money are gigs similar to this. When he lived in Beijing, he would do something like this about three times a week.

This was my favorite car.....  though I don't think they brought it for modeling purposes.

This girl was captivated by the water.

The camera did some weird things in this probably because the camera was in as much disbelief as I was. The girl was drinking the water!

Loida took most of the pictures of the event but while we were waiting, I was able to get some of her.

These pictures were taken on the street on our way home from the event.

I took this picture just because it shows up bit what the streets are like here.

I took this picture while riding on the bus. This would be considered little traffic.

It is pineapple season! Yay!

This is a mall near Loida's place.