Friday afternoon started out well. I went to the Hennessy press conference with Taiwanese pop star Wu Kequn and Swedish-French jam band Live Troneek. Lots of free goodies (t-shirt, mini bottle of Henn, etc.), which is always nice. Mingled a bit with the other reporters I knew at the scene. A little later, the stars were whisked out, where they did a little dance and clinked their glasses for the cameras.
When I was in Taiwan this Autumn, Kequn (aka. Ken) had a record out and, as a result, his face and body were everywhere. While omnipresent pop stars are par for the course in Taiwan, Ken's ads were particularly hilarious. Forget Cyndi's point-to-my-face-smile or Rainie's squirrel eyes, Ken was dressed in a leopard print muscle T-shirt, looking like deadly serious about his pop fluff tunes. For awhile I thought it was an ad for the circus coming to town instead of a new album release.
Sadly, Ken didn't look like he ran away from home at all. The stupidly coiffed hair was there but no wife beater. Just a one sized too small jackeet and laced up, knee high trooper boots. Homosexual, yes, riot inducing laughter, no. Too bad I didn't get to interview him about his clothing choice. Instead, Hennesy was really, really nice and provided me with questions to ask LiveTroneek. They were totally awesome, relevant questions as well. Things I never would've thought of myself. Thanks so much Hennesy for keeping the integrity of journalism alive in China.
The rest of the weekend was pretty much par for the course: Friday I had after work drinks and dinner with "Ze Italians", then on Saturday I was too late for the Eno rock concert, but chatted with Renee, Eno's co-founder, all the same. Saturday night saw me eat Uighur food and party till 4am at Guandii. Ho hum. Sunday I interviewed a graffiti artist for That's.
Sounds awesome, right? And it is, it is. I'm just worried that it will ever go beyond me doing all of this stuff for free. This article by Maria Trombly, a long time foreign correspondent in Shanghai, sure doesn't help the worries, either. In it, she describes my situation to a tee.
Some young journalists move overseas and write about local bars and restaurants for city magazines like "That's Shanghai," for low wages and long hours. Some get jobs with local English-language dailies like the Moscow Times, or they work for the English-language editions of local papers, helping clean up the grammar and occasionally doing some reporting.
Then it goes on to say everything people have been saying since I've decided to enter journalism: it is getting increasingly competitive, as newspapers are hiring less and less staff, and more or more kids are getting into it. This competition is putting downward pressure on already low salaries. You either have to have superb language skills (don't have), connections (in the process of getting), and persistence (we'll see). I'm liking my job a lot and think it's great for now. I don't even mind having to teach English as a day job, either. Things are going very well and previous to reading said article, I was getting stoked about my opportunities. It's just depressing reading these things and thinking, do I really want to give my all to journalism when the future is so gloomy? Do I love writing, news, etc. so much that it's more important than a stable future and a decent salary? Trombly ends by saying you have to be an eternal optimist and keep on plugging away. I suppose I'll find out if I have the required optimism....
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Chinese people, like almost every other activity they do, don't like to drink individually. Instead of going to the bar and ordering your own drink, then, people book tables with full bottles of alcohol. They share the cost of the bottle, sit around the table, play dice (a simple game where, basically, if you guess the wrong number, you drink), and joke with each other. Dancing is fun and definitely done, it's just done in groups.
5 comments:
I gotta say, what the article tells about contacts I think you have in spades. Just keep being the ridiculously sociable and likable guy that you are, while marrying that natural quality with your sense of drive and I think you'll have an edge over a lot of people.
What Maria has to say about persistence and optimism really resonated with my own climb up the film making ladder - making it all the more interesting that, at an earlier point in the article, she suggests that Journalism may very well be headed into a similar sphere.
All that being said, the point in the article which I agreed with in the strongest way was what she says about working for no money. Though my parents I have seen countless people underprice their services and all it does is make others undervalue their work - even treat them worse as people.
My personal rule of thumb right now is that if the people I'm collaborating with do not get paid, then okay I'll work unpaid as "we're all in this thing together" to try and do something which will earn us regonition/paying work. If the people I'm working for are getting paid, then I want to get paid too. At the end of the day, it's a confidence issue and I think you've got plenty of reason to be confident.
robb,
i hear you 100% dude. it's easy to get unpaid/low-paid writing gigs, especially abroad, but actually doing it as a living is really, really hard.
you should see the crap that gets submitted, published and paid for in the korean papers, as long as it was written by a korean. i'm sure it's the same in china.
it sounds like you are doing better than i when it comes to networking over there.
on a side note, are you interested in meeting up in the land of smiles (a.k.a thailand) for buddha's bday?
Blogger is back up! whoo hoo! I can access the comments.
Thanks for the support, Oliver and Tiff. I was in a bad way on Monday when I posted this, much better now.
Oh and Tiff, possibly, depending on when Buddha's bday is... does it coincide with the celebration of labor?
Oh and Tiff, networking here is easy because everyone in Shanghai is an entrepreneur. Which means they want PR for their company. Which means they're willing to talk to you.
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