One projection system was feeding live coverage of CNN while the other one had a map of America showing which states had fallen to which party. There was also a map of the electoral college with Amcham staff explaining the electoral college system to curious Chinese onlookers. Probably the biggest demographic attending were college students, but businessmen, teachers and curious onlookers who happened to be at the hotel that morning were there as well.
In a nice touch, there was even a drawing for a round-trip ticket to the US in the form of election participation. Entering the drawing took the form of a polling station, where contestants got to chance to 'vote' for who they felt would win the election and then drop their entry into a ballot box. There were even pins for the candidates and "I Voted" stickers.
I went in front of the polling station with a friend of mine and, in an attempt to simulate a real election day experience, tried to disenfranchise a Chinese voter by asking for her passport, explaining she had to fill out a sheet in another room and come back, and told here that the contest was called off and she'll have to wait till tomorrow to enter. When she started to become frustrated, confused and then angry I tried to explain that was joking and trying to "disenfranchise" her and that there were people really doing this at polling stations in America. This made here more confused. I didn't know how to say disenfranchise in Chinese, but I have a feeling that even if I did, it wouldn't of helped. She wasn't very impressed with my experiment and pushed me aside to vote for her plane ticket.
As one of the few real Americans there, I was confronted by many curious Chinese about who I voted for, what I thought about the two candidates, how did I feel about a black man becoming president and whether or not there would be any contention, recounting, or even civil war if the race became too close. Most people were also a bit confused by the big screen on which was projected a map of the US with red, blue and brown states each populated with a number and then a score in the corner. What does Obama 195 and McCain 69 mean? Where's the popular vote? I helped explain the confusing electoral college system to about a dozen different parties over the course of the morning and how it relates to the popular vote, poll station closings, the population of states and different time zones in the US (there's just one time zone in China). Some were disappointed that the election wasn't just determined by the popular vote.
Most of the Chinese I talked to were Obama supporters, but there was a McCain fan here and there. When Obama was announced the victor the group of by then 500 onlookers erupted in applause, apparently they were pretty pleased with the decision.
My Chinese colleagues and friends all had eyes on the elction, but not all Chinese cared about it. On the way home from dinner the next day I mentioned to the cab driver that America has a new president and asked how he felt about. "American's president doesn't have anything to do with me, I'm just a Chinese cab driver," he said "It's not like I can drive this taxi to America! Maybe if I could then I'd care about the president, but I can't."
Vocab: Disenfranchise - 剥夺...公民权
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1 comment:
That seems like such a good place to pick up on expat chicks! ha ha ha
Hek
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