A super state of mind

Two nights, one among thousands of screaming clamoring teens and twenty-something and one a quite house warming for a newly-wed teacher at my school, with one unifying theme. The last couple of days here in Liuyang have been dominated by the cultural phenomenon that is Chao Ji Nu Sheng. With a translated meaning of "Super Girl," Chao Ji Nu Sheng represents something relatively new and possibly significant in modern China, that is, a certain tendency for innovation, at least as much as that could be possible for what is essentially a modified ripoff of American Idol which is in turn an even less modified ripoff of Britain's Pop Idol. In China though, context is everything.
A few days ago I found myself combing the grounds of the school for Mr. Gao. A grizzled badger of a man in his forties or fifties, Mr. Gao is the caretaker at Tian Jia Bing responsible for looking after the classroom building, keeping the drinking water machines full and most of the other little things that nobody else here ever thinks about so long as they're taken care of. I needed Mr. Gao for a new big bottle of water for my house, a quest on which I had been thwarted for the two previous days, but far more importantly to see if he might have the keys to the roof of the school for that evening. The real impetus behind this search, besides a growing thirst, was that this past Thursday night Liuyang played host to a concert spectacular promising a veritable cornucopia of pop stars and, more enticing to me, a display by the vaunted Liuyang fireworks industry which I hoped to watch from the highest point in school. In a place where the night life usually consists of a street corner, some skewers of mutton and deciding whether to get our feet or our hair washed, it was, needless to say, a relatively big night for our little city here in the eastern most reaches of Hunan province.
In the early days of the People's Republic of China and the revolutionary years that led up to its creation, Hunan often found itself the center of attention. As the home province of Mao Ze Dong, the August Uprising of the Communists at Wen Jia Shi and countless other highlights of revolutionary history, Hunan played an important role in the development of China at its most basic level. These days, Hunan rarely competes for headlines with the big earners like Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and the others of the east coast Chinese economic powerhouse, but a growing sense of daring in television programming and a little leniency from the local propaganda officials has led Hunan back to the spotlight.
Back at school, my attempts at finding Mr. Gao failed in the end, but I did manage to track down Ms. Liu who works in the archive room above the classroom floors and just below the roof, as she too had the key I hoped to get for the padlocked gate. Unfortunately, she had taken off for a meeting at the Department of Education, so I bided my time and headed out for dinner at a restaurant known around here only as Farmhouse #3, which as far as I can tell serves the best Chinese food on the planet. 5 minutes after arriving I got a call from Ms. Zeng, our school's Wai Ban, in charge of foreigners. Apparently Mr. Tang, a vice headmaster at our school, had decided to put his considerable guanxi towards getting us tickets to this show, which when bought with money rather than relationships were absurdly expensive. We'd know in an hour she said, if we would have tickets or not. Less than five minutes later, another ring.
"Come back to school immediately, Mr. Tang has tickets," and we were off.
That evening passed in a blaring succession of pop ballads, one after another, but all played just a little too loud for the sound system and punctuated every now and then by some sort of bizarre fashion show/modeling contest of which I still have yet to receive a satisfactory explanation. While a smaller show than the international musical fireworks battle I attended last October, this one had two amazing pyrotechnic displays to open and close the evening. For the other several thousand people in the audience, the highlight was clearly the 3 song performance of Li Yu Chun, the 2005 number 1 Super Girl. Cheers, smoke machines, sing-a-longs, teenage hysterics, photos of Super Girls blown up to poster size, and fans rushing the margins of the stage only to be turned away by some sort of cross between a policeman and a hard hatted construction worker, this show had it all. Truly Chinese pop culture in full force; utterly modern in so many ways and yet at the same time, a barely restrained chaos, a perfect microcosm of China.
Some in the international media have suggested that the Super Girl competition, based on votes in the studio audience and from fan text messages, represents some sort of pseudo-political inroads for democracy. As far as I can tell, at this point that's pretty unrealistic and based on some false assumptions. To me, the Super Girl competition represents far better the careful production and fastidious staging of a public image, much more in line with my experiences here.
Friday evening should've been different. My Chinese teacher from last term, recently married in the eyes of the law although they're waiting, like most Chinese, for the ceremony until it can be truly extravagant, invited Matt and I to her new house in town for a meal and mini-housewarming. The meal was great despite numerous protestations that neither she nor our other friend had ever cooked anything we ate before. The house was great with legitimate sliding closet doors, some walls that aren't painted white and about a thousand different kinds of lighting, all of which are rarities in this part of China. The focus of the evening however, was not the house nor the meal, but the penultimate episode of this years Chao Ji Nu Sheng, whittling the remaining constestants down from 5 to 4. Between the four of us we bridged the space between "I watch every episode" to "I've seen it twice in my life" to "are you serious, we're watching this?" fairly evenly but nevertheless we all settled in for a full three hours of what could be the most watched show in China.
While it's popularity is impressive, perhaps the great accomplishment of this show is, in fact, an accomplishment of the network that puts it on. Hunan Satellite T.V. a network that exists as far from government run television as you can get in China has stuck one on government T.V.. Following the success of Chao Ji Nu Sheng China Central Television (CCTV) launched it's own government run and approved version which has utterly bombed in comparison. Chalk one up for the little guy.
Alright, my popstar related ramblings are getting a bit long. I'm still learning how to write this damn blog thing anyways.