TV Broadcast of the Obstacle Course Show

My Books > The Great China Quest > TV Broadcast of the Obstacle Course Show

On Tuesday night (September 7) of last week we invited some friends to Albert’s apartment and gathered round his television. At 7.30pm the familiar sight of Hunan TV’s obstacle course show started and within 5 minutes of watching, there we were, standing on the stage, being interviewed in Chinese and singing a song to the hosts! It was a surreal experience to say the least, watching ourselves on the screen with the knowledge that at that moment people all over China were watching us too! (We’ve already had people come up to us saying they saw us on TV the other night.)

Our interview was edited down from 2 minutes to about 20 seconds (they’d cut us down to allow more time for the next contestant who drank a whole bottle of beer through his nose!) and we soon found that the host had got a bit confused about our trip:

“And now we would like to introduce two foreign teachers from Guangdong Peizheng College” announced the male host in Chinese. “They are Albert and Adrian. Without spending any money, these two teachers have gone from Urumqi to Guangdong!” (We think he got confused about the hitchhiking challenge we had just told him about.) And just to make sure everyone misunderstood, a large Chinese subtitle flashed across the screen, “Not spending any money, from Urumqi to Guangdong”!

Adrian rolled the dice, aiming as all the contestants do, to get a “3”. This would mean that if we got past the turntables, we would win a prize! It was then time to tackle the course. By clicking on the link below you’ll see how we did.

(Our interview starts at 4:29 but we appear at various times during the show’s intro segment.)

Video Below (email subscribers click here)

Adrian’s only excuse is that it’s a lot harder than it looks on TV, at least that’s his story and he’s sticking to it! “Be careful! Stand up quickly!” the female host shouted as he fell before he even reached the first hurdle! “Oh! He should have done better than that! He’s so tall!” the other host said in disbelief!

In contrast, as Albert tackled the course, the host can be heard saying, “Albert, you’ve got the prize! We can give him the water heater! Can he upgrade the prize? Oh, he fell! He had the disinfection cabinet for a moment and now he has to give it back!”

Hope you enjoy the show as much as we did!

(There’s a full transcript of everything that was said in Chinese as well as the Chinese subtitles that periodically flashed up on the screen coming soon.)