The Nerd's Eye View

I was talking to my Dad the other day and he mentioned that my little sister has become a minor celebrity in Shanghai.

aside: I should preface this by saying that she had called me the other day to tell me that her language teacher had put her name forward for a small role on a popular daily soap opera. She was supposed to play the role of the new foreign wife. After getting over the shock of seeing an actual black person in their studio, the producers gave her the job.

She has since appeared in only one episode, but apparently to a modest viewership of roughly 300 million people. Since the show she's been accosted on the street by erstwhile fans many times and was even told (by no less personage than a university professor) that she hoped my sister's issues with her mother in law would soon come to an end. It's another example of the strange disparities between the modern image of China and the essentially simple nature of it's population. Still it's amazing to think of the modest viewership of my sister's show as being the equivalent of every man, woman and child in the United States.