2 Questions Every Girl is Asking Herself

Chapter 61

Oprah Winfey once shared on BBC The One Show her trade secret of interviewing people on television. She said right before she goes on air, she'd sit down with the guest in the green room and ask, "Why are you here? What is the one message you want to get across? I'm the one holding the mic. I will make sure you get that message across."

Oprah said once the guests know that, the nerves die down. They don't have to clutch at that intention, worrying they won't get a chance to do what they came on to do. They can relax. And for the next hour, they can just enjoy the conversation.

I would love to report my experience with FCWR was like team Oprah. But it wasn't.

The first day, we went in for training at the gleaming headquarters of Jiangsu TV. We gathered around a long boardroom table littered with lychee peels (leftovers from the previous meeting). And Zheng Ge (a heavyset, thin-lipped, beady-eyed man) a screenwriter by training, and reality TV producer by trade, laid down the law.

"Don't ask about horoscopes. Don't talk about religion. And don't say that distance between where you live is a problem."

We were to film three episodes over the next two days. Each episode would feature 5-6 men. We were told nothing of the men, and nothing of the "character labels" that will appear next to our own names when the show airs.

"Do you know what the audience hates the most?" Zheng Ge asked.

We all shook our heads, muted and confused.

"The audience hates ding zi hu the most," he said with emphasis. Ding zi hu are "nail households" which comes to us from the real estate industry: property owners who refuse to sell their houses to developers. Ding zi hu here refers to girls who remain on the show for a long time, outstaying their welcome.

As an audience member of the show, I can't say I share the same sentiment. The only people I remember from the show are ding zi hu. But the way Zheng Ge spat out these three little words suggested a different level of vehemence.

Of course, none of us would or could become ding zi hu. We were only there to film for two days before returning to our lives in Canada. But at the back at everyone's minds, we were all thinking the same thing: I'd flown 10 thousand miles just to be here, I'm not going down on the very first episode.

Knowing this, Zheng Ge nearly pleaded with us to "hold hands".

"You're only here for 3 episodes. Seize the chance. Hold hands as much as you can. You can win a pair of tickets to Greece," he said,

"You don't even have to go to Greece with the guy!"

My eyes widened at this.

I had always assumed when a guy and a girl leave the stage with a pair of tickets to Greece, they actually go to Greece together. It never occurred to me they would do anything but that. It never occurred to me that this part of reality TV would be – unreal.

But come to think of it, how many perfect strangers actually found love on FCWR?

No stats on that.

Setting aside the impossibility to have deep, soulful conversations, even the elusive "love at first sight" is hard to achieve on stage. Because unless you have the eye of an American sniper, you can't even make out each other's faces when you're a basketball court apart. Compound that with two pitfuls of live audience, and 23 other women, it's like going on a blind date with your entire extended family and the whole block of neighbors coming along to watch, while you attempt to flirt with a guy within a 15 minute-window, who probably lives on the opposite side of the country, and doesn't remember your name. Imagine scores of men and women being churned through this production model, all pushing and shoving, all jostling for the spotlight, and you have LOVE on the FCWR stage.

Useful then, to stay on the stage for as long as possible to attract the notice of a man who actually lives in her city. Ding zi hu simply understood that reality TV is an oxymoron. They saw the show for what it really was: a platform. And who can fault them for that?

In the end, it's not really about who held hands with whom, or whether they went to the Aegean Sea together.

The real value of the show comes from the sense that it is a window to the thoughts and expectations of China's current generation.