China Charlie

A weekly column about living in Dongguan, for those new to Dongguan, new to China, or anyone that likes a good story.  Written by an expat  who first came to Dongguan in 1987,  hopefully this series of articles will be both entertaining and informative.

Archives:

Welcome to China Charlie

Dongguan Driving Challenges

Fun With Air Travel in China

Vertical Speed Bumps

Language and Culture

Mobile Phones and Other Stuff

Karen Carpenter, Kenny G and the Chinese Water Torture… . .

Dan Gerous, where are you when we need  you?

Life in hotels in the “old days”, a “Moon Shot”, and the saga of the pink panties….

Was There Life After M*A*S*H

Camaraderie of Dong Guan in the “old days”.. . . 

Who's on First, China Style

Life at the Ramada/Guangzhou, Resting trucks, Dynamite, and other stuff

Is Dongguan becoming too civilized?

 Roadside Word Games, China Style

Was there life after MASH?? ?  ?

In the late 1970’s when the final episode of the TV Series M*A*S*H. was scheduled, several national magazines in the U.S. ran articles regarding what would fill the home entertainment void that would be left in Monday Night TV. I remember one magazine (TV Guide or Time) that titled the article “Will there be life after M*A*S*H?”

Of course, life on Monday Night TV did continue, and the long running likes of “Moonlighting”, “Home Improvement”, “Miami Vice”, etc. seemed to fill the gap in Monday through Friday night TV pretty well.

Moving ahead in time to the early 1990’s, I was living in an apartment complex in the Tian He district of Guangzhou, and life had become very routine (your basic “rut”). I found that I was going to the same places, listening to the same music, and eating the same food each week The apartment complex I was living in had Star World in English on their TV cable service, and at the time they were running re-runs of M*A*S*H every evening Monday through Friday, at 7:30

A friend of mine and I noticed that it seemed as though you didn’t see many of the expats out for dinner or drinks during the week until after 8:15, and in discussing this phenomenon over dinner one evening (at about 8:30),  the answer finally came to us. Apparently, a lot of people were doing the same thing we were, which was scheduling their day around the re-run of a TV series that had had its final episode over 10 years earlier. (as I wrote in an earlier paragraph, life had settled into a “rut”. It was during this period that I spent most of an evening playing with a saucer in a hotel bar that had a defect that gave it a near perfect balance, and allowed it to spin freely

A similar situation occurred here in Dong Guan in the late 1990’s, when it seemed no one was around on Tuesdays. It seemed that (again) Star World English was running several series from the states on Tuesday evenings, and it got to be known among the expats as “Serial Tuesday”.

Some people I know have been known to schedule overnight business trips over Monday Night, so they can catch the latest re-run of “Becker” on Monday Night.

The point here is that the English language programming on the Hong Kong channels “Pearl” and “World” leaves a lot to be desired, and you can watch just so much 24/7 news on CNN. The digital cable service offered by DGTV has made TV more enjoyable for us non-chinese speaking “couch potatoes”. Having several English language movie channels, English language news channels plus the likes of “National Geographic”, “ESPN”, and “Discovery”, has been a welcome addition, but most of the English speaking expats still miss “Star World” in English.

According to a friend, DGTV has indicated that they would be able to get the permits and such required for Star World in English, if there’s enough requests for it. In other words, we all need to let the good folks at DGTV know that we’re interested. 

If we want to be able to keep up on the latest antics of “Angel”, “Becker”, “Drew Cary”, etc. (plus the daily dose of “Hollywood Squares”), we need to call (or have a Chinese speaking person call) DGTV, and let them know that we would appreciate having the English language Star World added to their cable menu.

 Well, that’s about it for this week, so until next time “Y’all have a rice week now”