It is a universal law of being a journalist in China that the shittiest events are the hardest to get into. The swank, red carpet affairs always have someone at the door who knows me and/or my publications, even if I don’t have an invite. The fly-by-night pressers, attended by the juniorest staff of the worst local media, organized by the budget PR firms, are too clueless to have heard of any international media, and make me wait at the door half an hour even though I have an invite and a press pass and am on their list.
And then, of course, the event is a waste of time, basically the organizers patting themselves on the back for being wonderful. The thing is, most of the Chinese press will run this drivel verbatim, because few people can be bothered to find a story, and don’t know news from their ass. These are the events that give journalists “hongbao”, or envelopes of cash, basically bribes to cover their boring, news-unworthy non-events.
The thing today was a beauty supplies promotion and “show” by various brands, as part of the joke that is the official fashion week. The press conference was bad enough • I don’t know why I even go to press conferences, they’re useless and give me migraines • but then the show thingy afterwards was just hilariously, painfully bad and weird.
And I thought fashion shows were annoying, but at least there is pretty clothing (and sometimes pretty men) to look at. Granted, I started taking my own photos for stories just to give me something to do during fashion shows. This thing, though! How do you do a show for cosmetics, anyway? Their answer was to do a succession of utterly ridiculous musical dance numbers, with dumb little plots. The first had a couple getting up in the morning, the man showering, the woman primping. Then more women bounded on stage to get the man dressed and blow him kisses (while still in their nighties) as he grabs his briefcase and goes off to work.
Sexist much?
Then more of the same. They had eight dancers, four men and four women, interacting with a cast of all-female models. Which meant that most of the men were a good head shorter than most of the women, which I found pretty funny. Although fairly apropos, considering that, in China, most of the tall skinny modelish women date squicky fat little balding trolls. The worst part was at the end, as they defaced Cindy Lauper by playing her to this crap, they sprayed tons of a sponsoring perfume over the audience. It was nauseating, I nearly vomited. Couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
The daily swag take is part of what makes all this amusing. From the boring press conference, apart from the 200 kuai bribe (Which is rather wasted on me, wish they’d give some info I could write about instead. And it’s unethical to take, and rude not to, always awkward.), I got probably the strangest swag of my career. A sparkly purple wand, with a star and feather at one end and a pen at the other. That’s professionally useful! Too amusing. Then, two exercise wristbands with watches in them • actually useful • and a hair kit of a brush, two clips and a tiny-ass mirror on a brush handle from VS. The perfume-drenched show was a bit better: a Max Factor lipstick (pink), a Cover Girl mascara (black), conditioner and hairspray from Pantene, shampoo and conditioner from Wella, a box of those strange cloth facial thingies, an empty Anna Sui cosmetics bag (my second empty cosmetics bag this week, like I need any more), and, inevitably, whitening crème!
Ah, China and its whitening crème! I wonder what would happen if I used it simultaneously as the tanning booth vouchers I got?
I may not have gotten a story, but I got lots more useless beauty products than I need! God, I am way not girly enough for this beat, or this country. The only cosmetics that excite me are dark Estee Lauder lipsticks. But, hey, I have a poufy purple fairy wand pen now! I think simply owning such a think has made me 200% more feminine already.
