No Escape

There are some advantages to being 7000 miles away from home, especially in an election year.  There are no political advertisements on the television.  For the most part, there is not much coverage of the U.S. elections in the news.   Sure, from time-to-time you will catch a story on BBC World News.  But it comes in small doses and is tolerable.  CNN Asia has been making a lot of noise about the elections lately; Obnoxious segments with people yelling at each other. (Just like at home.)  A quick zap from the remote control is all that is needed to restore peace and harmony.  You can surf right past CNN to the apolitical tranquility of Dog Whisperer re-runs on one of the Filipino channels.

 Theresa and I were in Beijing last week - the last week before the Tuesday elections.  Our hotel had the full set of CCTV channels.

Side Note:  We don't have CCTV at our apartment.  We have satellite TV coming out of the Philippines. Strictly speaking, external programming is not supposed to be available in China....or at least not available to the general populace.  For foreigners it is tolerated, though.  Satellite TV keeps the expats happy and, since we're already corrupted, it can't corrupt us any further.  The only downside is that the CCTV programming is often better than that on the satellite.  The Chinese soap operas and kung fu movies are much better than the Filipino programming, which is mainly two-year-old re-runs of B-grade American cable TV shows.  (Dog Whisperer, Hillbilly Hand Fishing, Pawn Stars....)

 Anyway, in our Beijing hotel we had the full menu of CCTV to select from.  While surfing for a good kung fu movie, we stumbled across some local programming on the U.S. elections.  The photos here give you a feel for the show.  The format was a cross between a newscast, a debate, and an episode of American Idol.  The host of the show provided the news content - he explained the candidates and the key issues and the electoral climate.  He also posed questions to a panel of experts.  The experts would argue their points.  A couple of the experts were Chinese-speaking Americans, who seemed not-so-much to argue as to try to explain why things were not-so-simple as they appear on the surface. 

Every now and then the host would allow members of the audience to express their opinions or to ask questions of the experts.   After points were debated, he would ask the audience to vote as to which of the opposing positions they supported.  That's what they are doing in the photo immediately above....holding up little paddles to show their votes.

In case you are wondering, the Chinese name for Obama is 奥巴马.  The anglicized spelling is "Ào bā mǎ" and it is pronounced very similar to the actual English pronunciation.  Romney is not-so-easy a name for the local folks.  His Chinese name is 罗姆尼, anglicized as "Luō mǔ ní". The "R" is the killer.

The individual characters are for phonetic purposes and not really intended to have meaning.  However, if literally translated (according to Google translate) Obama's name might be something like a "mysterious Pakistani horse".  Romney would be something like a "fussy baby-sitting Buddhist nun".