No more cameras!

The other day the foreign teachers at my school were invited to eat lunch at a restaurant in our building.   It's a nice restaurant that we've gone to before and really enjoy.  So, we were excited about our free meal.

We sit down and all of a sudden there's a camera crew in the restaurant. We realize what this invitation includes. Supposedly this wasn't a commercial they were filming but they're opening another restaurant and it's going to be played there, or it's going to be played at this restaurant to advertise their other restaurant - I don't know.  They shot us eating our entire meal.  We had to stop and say how good the food was.  A little warning would have been nice!  We were far from camera ready.  I guess that was payback.

This sort of thing actually happens a lot.  Restaurants, schools, and businesses like to have foreigners in their establishments. It draws business.  Sometimes they even pay the foreigners decently - and they know what they're getting into before they show up.

I also saw this Chinese JIB in the park:

 

For those of you who don't know the long arm with a camera on it is called a JIB.  We used one on pretty much every show I worked on.   It seemed to work the same way ours do in the States.  Maybe I found the first thing in China that works the same way in the States!  Although, I'm no JIB operator.