Hello Uncle Foreigner is better, faster, stronger.
Playing this YouTube game, we periodically have to update our channel trailer to keep the experience fresh for new target audiences. But actually, it’s a good exercise to periodically revisit our vision, and think about just what the heck we are doing with our work. These days, it’s being snotty about other foreigner-know-it-alls in China. Well, and producing the best and most relevant web series of our time. Gee, we’re busy!
Am I being kind of glib? A little. Peter and I have declared this “The Season of the Business Plan,” wherein we continue to stretch ourselves creatively, but also try to for real answer the question, “So how are you going to make money at this?” But, thinking about business and marketing is difficult and I hate it, and it makes me a little bit petulant. On the other hand, these days we’re working the Underpants Gnomes model, and that won’t get you a business visa anywhere …
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 …
