Peter does a great job keeping our YouTube channel trailer fresh and current. He just uploaded a new version, which now includes footage of us goofing off in face masks during the Covid-19 outbreak. It’s important to stay current.
It’s fun for me to see these different trailers, because it makes our life in China seem so impressive and exciting. I mean, life is exciting and wondrous all, but it doesn’t always feel that way while your living it. We should all be so lucky as to have someone cut together a personal highlight reel.
The search for a decent, but cheap, pair of pants.
Baseline: I hate clothes shopping, so it’s even worse in a country where I regularly max out the size of what’s available. But, that can turn into a handy excuse when I’ve accidentally tried on a pair of pants that is too expensive.
Also, stick around after the story for a recent Taobao purchase, a complaint, and a viewer comment of the week!
Though we appreciate the time off, we’re not big into celebrating Chinese New Year … mostly because we don’t have a family in China to go see. But one aspect of the holiday that I really appreciate is the little door guardians. I think the pigs this year are very cute. I bought them at the supermarket!
We continue to consider the fact that we are not leaving China, for now. It’s a tricky business, choosing where to live. Every society has its flaws. But I think that puts on us the responsibility to to the good we can, where we can. When we can. How we can … How do I get out of this loop?!
This episode of the live stream/podcast is in two parts, because we had trouble maintaining a live connection to YouTube. In fact, this is the last episode that we did live, because streaming from China is too difficult.
But, we still had a rousing discussion of our creative process; We address keywording and why it’s so necessary to be “findable” on YouTube, as well as our early efforts to expand our vlogs into something beyond just a talking head.
“Uncle Sez” is our weekly live stream where we talk about the behind-the-scenes of making a China vlog.
Did you know Hello Uncle Foreigner hosts a chat show, taping live at Whoop Wu studios? We do, every week. And in this episode, we lay out a lot of the changes that have happened over the past two months. Also, there’s a discussion of what it’s like to act when you are not an actor — stay tuned to the second half for that.
But here’s a brief summary of the expansion of the Uncle Foreigner empire: ’Round about December, feelings came to a head that our primary YouTube channel, Hello Uncle Foreigner just wasn’t being seen. We were following all the SEO recommendations, and our content was GOOD! (We entertained the possibility that we weren’t as good as we thought that we were, but it still nagged that we weren’t getting negative responses. We were just getting no responses.)
Then, Peter spun off the music videos into Western Toilet, for organization’s sake. And then Western Toilet started to get views and subscribers with no promotion whatsoever. Which confirmed the theory that we weren’t doing something wrong, Hello Uncle Foreigner was just getting buried.
So … Hello Foreigner was born! We’re still in the middle of moving (and anticipate it will be fully migrated around June), but Hello Foreigner is the new home of our China vlog on YouTube. We are reposting the old videos that — by the numbers — almost no one watched the first time around. And we are putting up new vlog installments as we go; you can recognize the brand new content because it features a giraffe suit.
But, we didn’t want to shut the old Hello Uncle Foreigner down. We had just gotten a custom URL for giraffe’s sake! So old HUF is now the home of our weekly live-taped chat show where Peter and I discuss our lives as creators and China dwellers. It’s a real-time snapshot of our creative process.
It’s a small number, but a huge milestone for us! Thank you to every single one of our first 100 YouTube subscribers! You’ll be able to say you knew us when …
This holiday season, we’ve declared Thanksharing! It’s a time for friends and family to get together and tell each other how awesome Hello Uncle Foreigner is! Your roommate’s brother studying Mandarin; your cousins who travel to China each Spring Festival; your ski instructor … Thankshare with all of them the glories of HUF. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to catch all the latest videos right when they hit the ‘net.
And happy Thanksharing to all Foreigners, wherever you are!
Foreigner
A person whose homeland is a country different from the one in which they are presently extant
A super-rocking band that you love
One of a tribe of wacky misfits who has always felt a little on the outside of everything, but has found a spiritual home in the works of Hello Uncle Foreigner
