Radio Interview

I was right. Most of the questions they asked were pretty boring. First, it was all stuff about the magazine and then later on they asked about my life in Tianjin. I can speak Chinese OK, but it's really hard to speak well when nervous.

I'm pretty sure I didn't give the hosts the kind of answers they wanted to hear. Radio shows here are just supposed to be propaganda, and you aren't really allowed to say anything negative about anything, which I didn't, it's just that I also didn't say anything was good. Basically, I gave candid answers to their questions, and that's not what they are used to. Translated example:

Female Host: Do you have a lot of friends in Tianjin?
me: No. Most people don't want to be my friend. Most people just see that I'm white and think, "Oh, he definitely knows English." So they say, "Oh, can I practice English with you?"
Female host: Ah, they can practice spoken English. [laughs]
me: They don't really want to be my friend.
Male host: [suddenly changes to English] They don't want to really know something about it [sic - I think he meant "you"], they want to practice English.
me: [English] They don't care about me, just my white face.
Male host: Yeah, yeah.
Female host: [back to Chinese] Actually, you really want to find many real friends, right?
me: Huh?
Female host: Make many friends, real friends.
Male host: [English] You want to make some close friends. Maybe... maybe you want to know some close friend who is really care about you. [sic]
me: [English] I don't care. [Chinese] I don't care.
Both hosts: [nervous laughter]

Then they went to break and told me to try to say something positive after we went back on the air. Needless to say, I didn't really. Everything was lukewarm at best, cynical at worst. For those who know me, that's not very strange, but for them, I think it was odd to see a foreigner act like I did. They even said to me that I didn't seem to be like the other foreigners they'd had on before, who were much more excited, optimistic, and extroverted. My coworker, who came with me and was also on the show, said I should have just given them what they wanted and talked about how great Tianjin is. That turned out to be pretty hard for me to do. For some reason, I just couldn't go on and be fake and pretend I love everything. I hate crap like that. Perhaps it's just not in my nature.