Friday, April 1, 2011

Famous for the Color of My Skin

A few weeks ago I received a call from my friend Alex. He's a (white) musician here and has played in a vast variety of venues here. "Hey, I need to put together a four-person foreign band. Do you want to be in it?" "Okay," I responded, "When is the gig?" "Tomorrow, at a car show. I told them I didn't think I could get four foreigners together before then with no practice, but they said they don't care if we know how to play music, they just want four foreigners. You in?" The gig paid $100 a person, and all we had to do is show up, and play whatever we could figure out how to play without practicing. So basically, I was getting paid $100 to be white at a car show. Sweet!

A giant tour bus arrived at my door the next day to pick me up... I felt like a superstar... or something. We arrived at a 5-star hotel and were given the most elaborate lunch I've ever seen, and then the fun began.

We went to the area where the cars were set up, and began to set up our instruments. We went over to the soundboard, set up behind the cars and asked where they wanted us to set up. "We need you in front of the cars." "Do you have cords long enough to get us out there?" "Cords? We don't have cords." Oh. Okay, I guess we're playing an acoustic set? Good thing the main stipulation was the color of our skin. After much trouble I was able to find a chord that was maybe 2 1/2 feet long to fit my keyboard, and we found one for Alex that reached all the way past the cars. I'm not sure if you're picturing this... I was BEHIND the cars. He and my friend Olivia, who sang, were IN FRONT. Haha! Hey, a hundred bucks is a hundred bucks...

Next, the announcer brought us forward with a translator and asked us a few simple questions about whether we were accustomed to China and Chinese food. My Chinese is nowhere NEAR fluent but I understood enough to respond "Yes" after each question... somehow this gave the announcer the idea that I was fluent enough to INTRODUCE the rest of the band and the next song! "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh................" 5 hours later... "This... is... a... worship song... Yes." The announcer promptly looked at our interpreter. "What?" Yeah, he didn't ask me any more questions after that.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. We all went home to our normal lives and were forgotten. But I'm thinkin I'm gonna remember this experience for at least a couple more weeks. It pays to be a whitey.