Paul’s Big Break

Paul has some contacts at the Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and and a few days ago, they asked him to come to campus and edit a paper. They said it would take about 2 hours, after which they’d take us out to dinner. Well, we braved the bus system (which we’re getting better at but still nowhere masters of) and got to campus, only to find a car waiting for us. The woman we knew was not coming with us, but pawned us off on another woman who announced that we’d be going to the “new” campus, which was outside of town and about 45 minutes away. This seemed like a big deal just to edit a paper, but we went anyway. I was looking forward to having a couple of hours to write on my laptop, regardless.

So, we got to the new campus, and were led through what looked like a recording booth onto a TV set that was a Traditional Chinese Medicine version of “Good Morning, America:” two chairs positioned conversationally, a large carved wooden backdrop, some innocuous-looking fake sunflowers, a tasteful calligraphy scroll suspended on wires. Then they left us there. We sat around making jokes about how Paul was going to be on TV, and wondered where the hell the document was. In about 15 minutes, the woman came back with a few other people, 4 paper cups of water, and an enormous sheaf of papers. Then she sat Paul down on the set, in front of a microphone. “Just change whatever looks not quite right, but keep the same meaning,” she said. “Pause after each section, and then keep reading.” Um, what??!!

As it turned out, they were making a video about a new herbal garden project that they wanted to pitch to some investors, and it had to be ready for the President to preview the next morning. The script was 20 pages long and utter gibberish, and they wanted Paul to read it for a soundtrack that would overlay pre-recorded visuals. We stammered about, explaining that nobody had said anything about reading or recording, and there was about 15 minutes of chaos and confusion as they tried to figure out what the hell we thought we were doing there. On top of it all, the English in the script bordered on the utterly nonsensical. We asked if we could take it home and come back with an edited version the following week, but the video had to be ready for presentation the next day, so that was not an option. I explained that it would take several hours to edit it to a point that was acceptable, and they said not to worry about it – to which, of course, Paul and I asked, “If it doesn’t make sense, then what’s the point?” The woman was clearly upset, so we compromised – Paul started reading, and I took the subsequent pages and started editing as fast as my pen could go, but ultimately they caught up with me, and we had to let most of it slide. The hardest part was not totally cracking up as Paul read it into the microphone, and there were a few instances when we just couldn’t keep it together. “Herbs aroma emitting in woods. Gazed into the distance, spiral trail through hill chain where aroma of flourishing herbs flies over! Also with best plantings, and prestige of blooming clock! The golden Wenjiang, success of socialism village-town-in-one.” The sound techs were embarrassed but understood the comedy of the situation, and eventually we all pulled through. Paul was wonderful, even if neither one of us can pronounce Chinese to save our lives – serves them right for using “world-class” as the third most common adjective, after “good” and “spicy.”

Postscript: Afterwards they took us to an awesome little hole-in-the-wall restaurant where we had some spectacular “ma-la” (numb-spicy) fish that I got to look at while it was still swimming in a tile vat in the kitchen, and I learned a lot of vocabulary by pointing at things. They also informed us that we held our chopsticks like children. Ah, adventures.

~ by knifemaker on September 14, 2007.