Last Thursday my colleague Sandy came to me and asked if I were interested in acting in a TV-advertisement for Guilin(桂林Guìlín) City in China(中国Zhōngguó). A friend of her had asked her for a foreign "actress". Of course I agreed to this idea, because I thought it could be a funny thing to do.

After a short call on Friday morning, Tomm came to visit me in the office during lunchtime. We discussed the main topics: I and two masculine foreigners were needed in participating in a long TV-commercial about Guilin. The spot would be shooted on Friday night in a good restaurant. I contacted my friends Matthias and Basti to ask if they would like to participate in it, too. As expected they also agreed on the proposal.

So we met Tomm and another responsible woman at 7.30pm in front of the restaurant which is facing the Li River. After having had some coffee, the production team and actors, which came from Beijing, arrived. Suddenly the whole restaurant was crowded by people. The whole place was arranged, special lights were placed and the cameras where build up, while we got our instructions. Most of them could speak English, and sometimes Tomm assisted us. The idea behind this spot was that two people from Beijing came to Guilin and got in touch with settled foreigners there very fast. Our task was to sit at a table with the two Chinese actors, drink beer with them, talk and smile. This was not difficult for us, as we are very positive and communicative people.

While we chatted with the man and the woman, they filmed us with the cameras from different angels and places. After a while the producer complained ironically that Tomm should have found people of other nationality than Germen, because we ordered a lot of beer, which of course cost them money. But as we are German we can handle a lot of alcohol. ;-) Then each of us had to say a sentence in Chinese, about how long we already (fictionally) lived in Guilin. Afterwards the three of us raised our glasses and said: "Wo ai ni, GuiLin!" (I love you, Guilin!).

One and a half hours after the beginning of film production it was finished. We got our salary (which was little) and then were invited to about 25 more cans of beer with the producers.

It was a very funny time and we stayed some more hours with them to talk to them. They promised us to send us the DVD with the commercial and to stay in contact with us. All in all I think it was worth it.