Wal-Mart Publicity Monkeys

In my last post, I talked about how we foreign teachers were trotted out to a conference all in Chinese so that our boss can pretend that we do something that we most assuredly do not. That wasn't the first time the fact that we aren't Chinese has been used to promote something, and we all knew full well that it wouldn't be the last.

A few weeks ago, Bianca told us all that her Chinese tutor has some sort of contact at Wal-Mart that was looking for some foreigners for some sort of mysterious event at one of Dalian's Wal-Marts. We heard the words games and TV, and inferred the words "free stuff", so the hearty staff of Future 2 agreed to show up and show our western faces.

Having experienced it, I'm still no clearer on what exactly this mysterious event was for. But I do know that what it essentially was was a "lets embarrass a bunch of westerners in the middle of our store as entertainment for our shoppers." Or something like that.

Without any explanation for why we were there (someone mumbled something about a "second opening", but I don't really know what that is...), we were divided into two teams, and promptly entered into competition.

Round 1 was Emily, the Chinese tutor whipping out random Chinese words that we couldn't possibly know, and we had to guess at them. Ummm... yeah.

Round 2 was a contest where the teams in two lines had to start a dance, with each person adding a new move as it went along. You can imagine how that went.



In Round 3, they played a song by Chinese superstar Jay Chow, and we had to sing a line from the song. Why? I mean, the crowd sure thought it was funny watching us try.

Round 4 was similar, as they recited some lame ancient Chinese poetry about moonlight on your bed (in Chinese of course), and we had to recite it. Exciting I know.

But I will curb my sarcasm for Round 5. We all had balloons strapped to our ankles, and had to engage in Balloon Warfare in the middle of a Chinese Wal-Mart. I'd show you a picture, but why bother? Here's a video!



After all that excitement, we got to try our hand at making dumplings, which was a fun experiment in failure. The best part was when the Chinese shoppers started pushing and shoving to see what was going on, and then pushed and shoved us out of the way to show us how it was SUPPOSED to be done. One woman reached in and opened up all the ones I made, only to reclose them to her liking.

Hence, the T.I.C. label on this post.

There were no TV cameras, but we did in fact get free stuff. A bag of unwanted Wal-Mart merchandise including a piggy bank and a toothbrush.

I have absolutely no idea what happened today, but it sure was fun.

- Shawn

OH YEAH! And come back tomorrow for a whole slew of pictures of the shenanigans from Corey. I assure you, they're not to be missed.