Worst. Tablecloth. Pulling. Gig. Ever.

January 19, 2016 10:36 AM

They misunderstood my ability to be a dick, when correctly inspired. Juggler and comedian Mat Ricardo describes a nightmare gig in Beijing, starting with a (supposed) world record attempt and ending with a mad dash for the airport.
posted by gottabefunky (59 comments total)

I enjoyed reading the story. Though I wish I knew how things played out on the show once he left.
posted by not that girl at 11:00 AM on January 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

I am the sort of person who would be totally aggravated about this sort of thing and then... just do it anyway, because, geez, I flew this whole way and spent all this money....

Sigh.

I love people who stand up for themselves. Kudos to this gentleman.
posted by Phreesh at 11:00 AM on January 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

Would someone with a little bit more experience with China and the reach of the government be able to enlighten me: Is it really possible that the t.v. studio could interfere with this performer's Visa status? My immediate thought is that it's an empty threat, but I know that a fair amount of Chinese media is state run. Chilling in either case...
posted by Krazor at 11:06 AM on January 19, 2016

Okay, can someone explain the "pull one cloth between two tables, repeatedly" or provide a link or something? Was he supposed to whip a tablecloth onto a table underneath stuff?
posted by Etrigan at 11:07 AM on January 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

...can someone explain the "pull one cloth between two tables, repeatedly"...

The author demonstrates. Not the "repeatedly" part, though.
posted by Western Infidels at 11:13 AM on January 19, 2016 [27 favorites]

I'm glad we're reading this story instead of one about a desperate entertainer stranded in China while diplomats try to get him out.
posted by emjaybee at 11:18 AM on January 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

I felt like he wasn't enough of a dick. My first instinct is to do the show, but fail so badly and cause so much damage they regret calling me in the first place.
posted by fungible at 11:28 AM on January 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

Would someone with a little bit more experience with China and the reach of the government be able to enlighten me: Is it really possible that the t.v. studio could interfere with this performer's Visa status?

I assume if you enter China on a visa that says "I will be working for TV Company X" and then TV Company X calls up the authorities and says "this guy isn't working for us any more", men from Immigration turn up to kick you out of the country.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 11:37 AM on January 19, 2016

So. Bear Grylls is some kind of wing-ripping-off asshole?
posted by Sintram at 11:39 AM on January 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

I assume if you enter China on a visa that says "I will be working for TV Company X" and then TV Company X calls up the authorities and says "this guy isn't working for us any more", men from Immigration turn up to kick you out of the country.

He must really want to go back to China, then, since that sounds like a solution to his problem.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:40 AM on January 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Bear Grylls Survivor Games
posted by jessssse at 11:42 AM on January 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

This sort of matches most of my experiences with planning things in China. I can't really explain it, but you kind of end up having to just go with the flow most of the time. The sense I had was that there is either massive miscommunication between all people between the person who initiates an action and the person who carries it out or there is a sense that foreigners would never go for certain things if they knew the real reasons behind those things. But, as I said, i can't really explain it so there could be a hundred other reasons.

On a side note, I've consistently felt more fucked over dealing with industry types from LA than from China.
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:46 AM on January 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

The author demonstrates.

So...what's the secret? Heavy props? Stiffened cloth? Slippery table surface?
posted by gottabefunky at 11:46 AM on January 19, 2016

There was excellent communication here; either the station wanted him to fail, or they wanted to change the setup without his OK.
posted by zippy at 11:51 AM on January 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

So...what's the secret? Heavy props? Stiffened cloth? Slippery table surface?

I haven't quite figured it out, but I think it has something to do with IKEA dishes.
posted by jessssse at 11:53 AM on January 19, 2016

So...what's the secret? Heavy props? Stiffened cloth? Slippery table surface?

Fast hands, smooth-based props (but not greased or anything like that), and practice, practice, practice.

There probably isn't a hem on the tablecloth, either.
posted by Etrigan at 11:55 AM on January 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

And a few crates of spare dishes for the 10,000 practice attempts.
posted by sammyo at 12:04 PM on January 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

That trick is really cool. From what I'm seeing, each piece is sitting in a saucer, and the saucers of the small light things (teacups) are under the lip of the saucer of the big heavy things (pitchers) so maybe the weight holds them down better and they're less likely to go flying away.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:09 PM on January 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Going with LobsterMitten's analysis, the trick here is not a trick, it is practice with a set of objects where you know exactly how they will respond. And the saucers allow for slip and then realignment of tippy-over things.

The same principle is used for earthquake resistant structures like SFO which are built atop seismic isolation bearings that sit in giant saucer-like cups. These allow the building to slip sideways under lateral earthquake shaking and return to their original positions after, rather than have load bearing columns become twisted or broken.
posted by zippy at 12:21 PM on January 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

There was excellent communication here; either the station wanted him to fail, or they wanted to change the setup without his OK.

I think it's pretty clear with the bait and switch, denial of any clear cut agreements and the surprise competitor that is fully versed in the 'new form' of the trick, that they want to set up foreigners to fail on national TV. Put on a competition of something impressive and bring in an outside supposed 'expert', but stack the deck so that a domestic participant is shown to be that much better than Johnny Foreigner.

State run media, and all that.
posted by Brockles at 12:24 PM on January 19, 2016 [22 favorites]

More exactly, SFO uses friction pendulum bearings.
posted by zippy at 12:25 PM on January 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

. He must really want to go back to China, then, since that sounds like a solution to his problem

Given pretty much any other options including "leave all your clothes and stuff behind and lose thousands of dollars", you want to take it and avoid getting picked up by Chinese immigration for breaching your visa conditions. Not because it will always go life changing my wrong, but because it always could.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 12:26 PM on January 19, 2016

Somewhere, on a lonely blog indexed only by Baidu, is an irritated post by a mid-level television studio exec who wanted to expand the local network's English-language offerings, and so paid for airfare and a visa for a renowned Brit to come do some sleight-of-hand live on the air... except the guy was stone-cold crazy, got into shouting matches with the producers about only wanting to use props from a Swedish furniture designer (WTF?), refused to work with anyone else on the stage at the same time, and then got his agent to yell some more while he slipped out the back door and ran out into the industrial park exurb where the studio is located. In January. Without his jacket. They finally had to make one of the interns go drive him back to his hotel, where he leapt out and made a dash for a cab like he was working for MI6 or something.
posted by Mayor West at 12:28 PM on January 19, 2016 [36 favorites]

I felt like he wasn't enough of a dick. My first instinct is to do the show, but fail so badly and cause so much damage they regret calling me in the first place.

No shit. I read the entire thing to find out what he did that made him race to the airport. Turns out he did nothing unless you count racing to the airport.

I wanted to see a clip of the show where the Chinese performer did the trick that he was set to do. I wanted fire. I wanted tears. I wanted someone's career to be ended in shame.

I feel like this was a bit anticlimactic.

tl;dr version: So I got the willies about what they wanted me to do, so I bolted. Fuck China.
posted by cjorgensen at 12:38 PM on January 19, 2016

There's a germ of a great TV show in here. Book people onto what they think is a normal show in a faraway land to do a trick or perform something, then have staffers make it more and more surreal and ridiculous while contestants bet on what will be the breaking point.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Ricardo, but now you will not be allowed to leave Azerbaijan unless you defeat Samir in a live-bees-up-the-butthole contest." "WHAT"
posted by delfin at 12:41 PM on January 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

In China either foreigners are supposed to suddenly realize how wonderful China is OR they are supposed to be inferior to Chinese people. This show is the second type. The TV was never going to let him do his trick, he was there to help some Chinese person rack up Guinness World Records and look good doing it while he looked like a bumbling foreigner.

The Chinese government would not revoke his visa because he did not go on the show, he just needs to get out before the visa ran out. The TV personal however threaten him with such things and then not help him because that worked for them in the past with other foreigners. (Do they do this on The Bachelor too?) The yelling and the changing of the trick may have felt underhanded and bullying but it may also have had a lot to do with cultural differences. Luckily, there usually is another way and low and behold, he had his James Bond or Jason Bourne experience and got out just in the nick of time!

For those of you who want the TV ending: the Chinese person did their trick with the table clothes, they filled the foreigner time slot with some extra fluff or a small trick, and the show went on.

The more interesting questions is: What is going to happen to the TV people when the Chinese Government finds out about this article? It does not show China in a good light.
posted by mutt.cyberspace at 12:59 PM on January 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

tl;dr version: So I got the willies about what they wanted me to do, so I bolted. Fuck China.

And the bit about the TV show breaking all the agreements.
posted by zippy at 1:02 PM on January 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

cjorgensen: I too was expecting more fireworks, but bolting on a show, in a foreign country where you don't speak the language or know anybody, just as it's starting to shoot, and getting the fuck out of the country while it is still shooting, making yourself completely unreachable by the ridiculously shitty producers, is still pretty baller.
posted by Navelgazer at 1:03 PM on January 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

delfin: "There's a germ of a great TV show in here. Book people onto what they think is a normal show in a faraway land to do a trick or perform something, then have staffers make it more and more surreal and ridiculous while contestants bet on what will be the breaking point.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Ricardo, but now you will not be allowed to leave Azerbaijan unless you defeat Samir in a live-bees-up-the-butthole contest." "WHAT""

Google Simpsons Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo
posted by Splunge at 1:04 PM on January 19, 2016

cjorgensen: I too was expecting more fireworks...

He's also British, so calibrate your sensitivities about what qualifies as dickish properly.
posted by cman at 1:10 PM on January 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is basically every day of my year working in China. Never again.
posted by congen at 1:24 PM on January 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Having lived in China (and been recruited to be a Token Foreigner on piddling TV a couple times) in the 90s, this story surprises me not at all. There is, I think, a somewhat racist assumption that any time a non-Westerner (esp. one from a developing country) contacts a Westerner and requests our presence, the reason is that they admire us or that we have something they don't have and that's why they want us. The reality is that the Chinese invented that attitude (with they themselves being the obvious choice for bestest and most advanced civilization) and they have had at least 2000 more years than us to practice it. If they just wanted a table-cloth puller, they have 1.3 billion people (and a long, long history of acrobatics and sleight of hand) from which to choose a domestic tablecloth puller from. Clearly it was not the tablecloth pulling (or the beer bottle walking or other unspecified acrobatics--I mean, have you seen Chinese acrobatics schools?) they were after.

Definitely baller to just up and leave, though.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:27 PM on January 19, 2016 [17 favorites]

The trick here is not a trick, it is practice ..

You just described all magic tricks.
posted by Pendragon at 1:28 PM on January 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

This reminds me of when I lived in Korea. I was teaching English at elementary school, it was around 5 PM and I was packing up to leave. My co-teacher comes and says, "We will have meeting now, you need to come". So I grab my stuff and follow her to the meeting. Which is on a bus, the first sign that maybe "meeting" is not the word she's looking for. But, hey, it's Korea and a case of soju appears so I'm not one to complain.

At any rate, the bus drives like 2 hours north up near the border and stops at this one-room schoolhouse + taxidermy museum. In the schoolhouse, they get a tour and then everyone starts singing old Korean school songs and people are WEEPING WITH NOSTALGIA and I'm kind of hammered and I have no idea where I am or what this place is, but then we all get on the bus again. This time they take us to some spot where the Koreans killed a bunch of missionaries and they all take novelty photos pretending to kill me, which I have to admit is a good idea and funny and will get a lot of likes.

Then we go to dinner, everyone is hammered, the VP chases the principal around in a drunken fit of something and one of them steps in soup and everyone laughs. and then we get back on the bus and roll into Seoul around 1 AM.

I still don't know what that meeting was about
posted by GilloD at 2:09 PM on January 19, 2016 [38 favorites]

You just described all magic tricks.

Not exactly. The trick with the tablecloth pulling is that it isn't a trick. It's exactly what it appears to be. It just requires lots and lots of practice. Making a coin disappear also requires practice, but (and this is important), the coin doesn't actually disappear. There's a trick to it.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 2:22 PM on January 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

You just described all magic tricks.

Not entirely. A lot of deceptions (magic tricks, cons, intelligence operations and so on) rely on the difference between the perceived reasonable amount of effort/expense that could go into something and the actual, much greater, amount. To one's intuition, it makes no sense that a magician would destroy 54 decks of cards to make one deck with a trick card, or that somebody would custom-manufacture a trick plastic bottle cap with a hidden compartment (and it being a replica of a worthless disposable object is what makes the trick there, psychologically), or, for that matter, that a con artist would spend a lot of time creating a fake persona and getting to know a lonely pensioner on a dating site just on the off-chance that they may have money worth stealing. It's a common cognitive bias.
posted by acb at 2:58 PM on January 19, 2016

"I'm sorry, Mr. Ricardo, but now you will not be allowed to leave Azerbaijan unless you defeat Samir in a live-bees-up-the-butthole contest."

". . . And the flowers are still standing!"
posted by The Bellman at 3:05 PM on January 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

here is, I think, a somewhat racist assumption that any time a non-Westerner (esp. one from a developing country) contacts a Westerner and requests our presence, the reason is that they admire us or that we have something they don't have and that's why they want us...If they just wanted a table-cloth puller, they have 1.3 billion people (and a long, long history of acrobatics and sleight of hand) from which to choose a domestic tablecloth puller from. Clearly it was not the tablecloth pulling (or the beer bottle walking or other unspecified acrobatics--I mean, have you seen Chinese acrobatics schools?) they were after.
soren_lorensen

This is a pretty bizarre take on this story, and kind of a bad faith reading, I think.

If his telling is correct, the author didn't think he was going to China to grace them with his glorious Western presence. He took the TV station's offer at face value and went to perform stunts that they had agreed on via email. He was then the victim of a bat and switch, and left.

No, it was not clear that the tablecloth pulling wasn't what they were after. Why would it be? He got an invitation to perform his act on TV, which he had done before. He reasonably assumed that that it is what was being asked, and that he wasn't walking into some weird trap to make Chinese performers look good at the expense of Western ones.

I'm not sure how you got "racist Westerner with a superiority complex gets knocked down a peg". It's pretty bizarre to defend this kind of deception and manipulation.
posted by Sangermaine at 3:38 PM on January 19, 2016 [16 favorites]

I would say that the bait and switch is a hallmark of China. They try it on everyone, although probably disproportionately on ethnic foreigners. Get a local whenever possible, even if you understand the language.
posted by halifix at 3:47 PM on January 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Getting ripped off, lied to, bait-and-switched, and vaguely but politely threatened with official corruption - describes every business interaction with Chinese so-called professionals I ever had in 8 on and off years of doing business there. Second only to Russians in that regard.
posted by innocentsabored at 4:04 PM on January 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

The more interesting questions is: What is going to happen to the TV people when the Chinese Government finds out about this article?

Well, yes, but it will never be seen in China.
posted by SLC Mom at 4:09 PM on January 19, 2016

I would say that the bait and switch is a hallmark of China. They try it on everyone...
Exactly and, as a professional performer, he should have expected nothing less. More so, his agent should have been well aware of what was going to happen. I guess that wouldn't make for an amusing anecdote, though.
posted by dg at 4:14 PM on January 19, 2016

I was more trying to explain how this happens (and it happens a lot). I don't see this guy as getting knocked down a peg for being racist because he wasn't (necissarily--I mean, I don't know the dude), just that this happens (again: quite a lot) I think in part because when a call comes in from China a lot of agents seem to be like why yes of course this country of over one billion needs the talents of my client specifically and don't question it.

No one was in danger of dying or anything here (well the acrobats with faulty props might have a case to make there). He had a bad business trip, which he now gets to tell an amusing story about. He reacted perfectly appropriately and would have been justified in being an even bigger dick if he'd had a yen. What the producers did was shitty and dishonest and awful. But it would not have gone amiss for his agent to have thought hmmmm of all the requests for my client's appearance, why halfway across the world in a country well known for producing oodles of its own precision physical performers? Is my guy really that unique in all the world orrrr maybe is there something else at work here? That's not this guys job to consider, but it is his agent's (and good on said agent, after realizing the mistake, for getting a flight booked immediately).
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:30 PM on January 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Is my guy really that unique in all the world orrrr maybe is there something else at work here? That's not this guys job to consider, but it is his agent's (and good on said agent, after realizing the mistake, for getting a flight booked immediately).

He was told that he would get the chance to break a world record, so yeah, that's more or less "unique" by definition.
posted by Etrigan at 5:45 PM on January 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

But it would not have gone amiss for his agent to have thought hmmmm of all the requests for my client's appearance, why halfway across the world in a country well known for producing oodles of its own precision physical performers? Is my guy really that unique in all the world orrrr maybe is there something else at work here? That's not this guys job to consider, but it is his agent's (and good on said agent, after realizing the mistake, for getting a flight booked immediately).
soren_lorensen

He's not some guy on a street corner, he's apparently a fairly renowned and accomplished performer who's been on TV before precisely for his high level of skill in this kind of performance. Why would a request for a TV performance of said skills in China set off alarm bells?

I don't know, it seems like you're kind of blaming the guy for not assuming what appeared to be an honest invitation from a TV program to perform his feats as he's done in the past is fraudulent simply because it was from China.
posted by Sangermaine at 5:51 PM on January 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

See in America we just invite Chinese students to come study in our universities and then keep their tuition money when it turns out they don't have nearly enough English to actually get the education they're paying for.
posted by straight at 7:07 PM on January 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

> > I would say that the bait and switch is a hallmark of China. They try it on everyone...

> Exactly and, as a professional performer, he should have expected nothing less.

We have a name for this strategy - it's called "blaming the victim". Also, the idea that everyone should know that all people of a certain country are crooks has a name too...

> He had a bad business trip, which he now gets to tell an amusing story about.

He's out a couple weeks of his life and likely also a bunch of money for incidental expenses, as well as incurreing a ton of unnecessary stress. I'd pay good money for that not to happen to me.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 7:14 PM on January 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

This reminds me of when I lived in Korea
...
I still don't know what that meeting was about

Your story and the OP are completely dissimilar, but I still think you've got a great story there.
posted by Metro Gnome at 7:33 PM on January 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

The TV show isn't the performers doing tricks. The TV show is the Chinese producers luring foreign performers to the studio and then secretly filming their reactions to ever-more-ridiculous requests for changes in their acts.
posted by um at 8:30 PM on January 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

The sense I had was that there is either massive miscommunication between all people between the person who initiates an action and the person who carries it out or there is a sense that foreigners would never go for certain things if they knew the real reasons behind those things.

When I went to beijing to help setup myspace china (good god in a company history full of bad decision making from the top, that one ranks amongst the worst. Did you know Rupert Murdoch's wife was Chinese? Gee I wonder if that had anything to do with it. But I digress.), I had meetings with people where I explained, in massive detail, with many numbers and a translator who was an engineer employed by the US company, that fully syncing all user data between the two sites (and they had to be separate, because china) was simply not possible because the amount of data flow needed vastly exceeded what we could get through the great firewall, and we would have to do some selective loading and incur some performance hits between users with unestablished relationships.

At the end of the meetings they would all nod and say "so we're syncing everything, yes?"

At least they bought us a lot of seriously delicious food and a fuckton of tsing tao.
posted by flaterik at 8:47 PM on January 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

"ugh I went to this horrible weird country with weird things and weird red mush for food and weird rules and horrible bad cityscape and bad stuff happened. never going to that bad place again."

Kind of reminds me of the time I got to Ulanbataar on the train, and the acquaintance I had met on the train scrunched up their face and said, "Why are we in this dusty shithole?", and then (literally) immediately sprained their ankle stepping down a set of steps. Just saying; going to a place with a shitty attitude usually results in a shitty time.
posted by suedehead at 9:49 PM on January 19, 2016

I would appreciate the bait-and-switch about as much as the author, but finding makeshift ways of travelling large distances across foreign cities or countries at short notice is SO. MUCH. FUN. (No sarcasm, I fucking love it.)
posted by iffthen at 10:36 PM on January 19, 2016

"the coin doesn't actually disappear. There's a trick to it."
LIES LIES LIES!
posted by boilermonster at 11:06 PM on January 19, 2016

horrible bad cityscape

So to expound on my Los Angeles -> Beijing experience, many people told me that the smog and traffic congestion would be horrible and I thought "HAH! I am from Los Angeles, how bad can it be?"

Bad. So very bad. That is how bad it can be. I cannot stress enough how much I was wrong.

I really don't think this was a case of a westerner encountering something different. Beijing is very much a first world city. It's just one where we can experience the future dystopia of a land ruled by those who hate government regulations related to the environment because they might impede economic development.
posted by flaterik at 12:19 AM on January 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

suedehead: "going to a place with a shitty attitude usually results in a shitty time."

Also, inviting someone somewhere and then treating them with a shitty attitude toward them also usually results in them having a shitty time.
posted by Bugbread at 3:43 AM on January 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

"I'm sorry, Mr. Ricardo, but now you will not be allowed to leave Azerbaijan unless you defeat Samir in a live-bees-up-the-butthole contest." "WHAT"

Lucy's gonna have a lot of 'splainin' to do
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:29 AM on January 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

I would say that the bait and switch is a hallmark of China

My gf did the teach English in China for year thing. A few months into the experience she set the kitchen of her apartment on fire in a hilarious doughtnut-making accident which had her running naked into her neighbor's apartment.

She immediately offered to pay her landlady (who was part of the organization which was paying her to teach) for any and all repairs. Her landlady said that would be nice, but not to worry about it, and kept saying this despite multiple offers to pay for repairs. Her landlady wouldn't even tell her how much repairs had cost.

Once her contract in China was about to run out though, the landlady presented her with a bill for the "repairs" which was clearly ridiculously inflated. Although, the teaching company would be happy to substantially reduce the amount if my gf would be willing to extend her teaching contract for another year, and they had just the place (out in the boonies) where she could go!

I would have just bounced back to the US, but she's the more responsible type. She negotiated down to what she thought was an actual estimate of the repairs (which still amounted to a big chunk of what she'd saved up in China), and did not extend her contract.

There's probably a lesson in this about shitty labor laws and the effects thereof.
posted by Panjandrum at 5:55 PM on January 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

And/or wearing clothes while making donuts.
posted by flaterik at 6:02 PM on January 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

But it would not have gone amiss for his agent to have thought hmmmm of all the requests for my client's appearance, why halfway across the world in a country well known for producing oodles of its own precision physical performers?

I understand what you’re getting at, I just don’t think it has any relation to this story.
The guy is a professional entertainer. He got a gig in China. They tried to screw him.
By your reasoning Celine Dion should expect to be ripped off by the Chinese, why would they need her, surely they have lots of people who can sing in China?
posted by bongo_x at 9:40 PM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]