>

Back in the race

>

Updated: 2012-02-03 07:42

By Mike Peters (China Daily)

Print Mail Large Medium  Small 0

 

Allan Wu, host of Amazing Race: China Rush, now lives in Shanghai. [Provided to China Daily]

 

US-born TV host who was once lost for words found his voice in China

As a child in San Marino, California, Allan Wu had no vision of himself as a bridge between his family’s ancestral culture and its new one.

“My parents were first-generation immigrants from Shenyang in Northeast China,” he says. “But I was born in America and I wanted to be an American – ‘to be like everybody else’.”

Today the community where he grew up is about 30 percent Asian, “but back then there were just a handful”.

So young Wu struggled to learn English because it was not the language at home, and he resisted his parents’ urging to learn Chinese because that was not his vision of himself.

“I was an ESL (English as a second-language) student through at least the second grade,” he says. “I remember an exasperated teacher finally asking, ‘What language CAN you speak?’”

Fast forward to a recent week in Beijing, when the host of TV’s Amazing Race: China Rush bounced into China’s capital with snappy banter that flowed freely between English and Mandarin.

At one appearance, one-time VJ Wu was exhorting a crowd of US expats at the Temple Theater to chant “You peng zi yuanfang lai, bu yi le hu. (We are happy when friends visit from afar.)” He was in town to help launch Project Pengyou, a campaign to rally American “China veterans” to support US President Barack Obama’s 100,000 Strong Initiative.

That effort is designed to boost the number of US students in China from 13,000 to 100,000 in four years.

Wu himself first came to China not as a student but an actor wannabe. He had been working as a model with the Ford agency in Los Angeles, with some VJ gigs on the side. “I liked representing the Asian community in the States,” he says, but he grew tired of being “a token” in a fashion shoot with eight Anglo-Americans, three Latinos, two blacks and him.

“I wanted to be an actor, and I wanted to work in an environment where I was part of the majority.”

So he snagged a $100 flight to Asia as a documents courier, and auditioned to be a VJ for music television in Taipei. “I had to introduce a Smashing Pumpkins video” – and got the job despite one small problem.

“Your Mandarin is absolutely atrocious,” Wu recalls being told. “But we see something in you.”

That “something” could have been his gift of the gab, or the raw zest for life that makes images of the muscle-shirted actor leap from his webpage.

Resisting one last tug from his life in Los Angeles – “I had just gotten my personal trainer certification so I didn’t have to do the ‘waiter in between acting gigs’ thing.” – Wu made the leap to Taiwan.

“It was really hot and humid, and my mother asked me, ‘Why do you want to come here, after we sacrificed so much to come to the US and give you the opportunities there?’

“It was so, so ironic,” he says, laughing at the memory of himself as a child, so determined to be a US citizen, not Asian.

“But she was very supportive when she realized how serious I was about the opportunities on this side of the Pacific.”

He felt very alone at first, but buckled down to study Mandarin and savored the “cool” job at MTV, where his main responsibility was interviewing foreign artists like Julio Iglesias and Mariah Carey as they came through Taipei. But when his one-year contract was up, he was off to Hong Kong looking for movie roles.

“That was back to the starving actor life again. I just didn’t mesh with the place as quickly as I did in Taiwan, and while I was still trying to learn Mandarin, suddenly Cantonese was a whole new challenge.”

He planned to move on to Shanghai within a year, but fate intervened.

Wu had some part-time work in Singapore – he hosted the CommunicAsia show for a Japanese telecom giant, among other gigs. “On one trip I was checking out some agencies – there are great photographers out there, etc – when one agency rep said to me, ‘When I look at you, I see dollar signs.’”

That was flattering, Wu says with a monster grin, “but I told her that I’d done the modeling thing and what I really wanted was to act.” So she introduced him to a talent manager in Singapore, and suddenly he had a contract to make Chinese television dramas.

His new employers were “keen on new faces”, he says, and he found himself playing the lead in what turned into a blockbuster Chinese drama even though he still could not speak Mandarin very well.

“Those were some really dark days, messing up my lines all the time.” But he relished the challenge. “That’s an intense way to learn language, being in somebody’s face all the time and having to say the lines.” The producers eventually decided to dub him, which was commonly done anyway, but Wu was disappointed that they did not use his own voice. He won that chance back, “but not until about my third drama there”.

It was a great job, Wu says, but then he learned that the producers of television’s The Amazing Race were auditioning potential hosts for an Asian version of the show. He was itching for the job.

“There were a lot of people gunning for that – hit show, fun concept, lots of travel. I had been a contestant on Fear Factor – eating bugs, the whole thing – so I was a big reality-show junkie.” The candidates were narrowed down to three, and Wu says he got picked both for his on-camera skills and because once, during a sudden thunderstorm, he delighted a producer by roaring onto the set on his motorcycle, dripping wet.

After a few seasons he was approached by another company about doing an Amazing Race show for China. Once that group secured the rights to do the show officially, Wu was again ready to pack for Shanghai.

In the meantime he had spent 10 years in Singapore, married the actress Wong Li-lin and become half of a celebrity couple. He also became the father of two children.

At home he often found himself talking like his parents. “It was that cross-culture irony again,” he says. “The whole time in Singapore, I’m saying to the kids, ‘You gotta speak more Chinese.’”

After agreeing to host Amazing Race: China Rush, Wu jokes that he laid down an ultimatum: “You don’t want to learn Chinese. I’ll bring China to you.” And a few months ago, after the show’s second season, the family was settling in Shanghai.

“We are looking for candidates, contestants for season three now,” he says. Meanwhile, he was emceeing a concert for Project Pengyou and helping the organizers figure out how to get more US students to come study in China.

“Most stereotypes are not rooted in hostility but in a lack of interaction.

“And exposing young people from all parts of US society to China’s culture is a big step forward,” he says.

Updated: 2011-12-18 06:47                                                              By Mike Peters (China Daily)

Provided to China Daily

Entertainer Allan Wu, host of this weekend’s BooeyLehoo concert, wasn’t always a likely ambassador ofcross-cultural experiences, Mike Peters discovers.

As a Chinese-American kid in San Marino, California,Allan Wu had no vision of himself as a bridge betweenhis family’s ancestral culture and its new one. “Myparents were first-generation immigrants from Shenyangin Northeast China,” he says. “But I was born in Americaand I wanted to be an American - ‘to be like everybodyelse’.” Today the community where he grew up is about30 percent Asian, “but back then there were just ahandful.” So young Wu struggled to learn English since itwasn’t the language of his own house, and he resistedhis parents’ urging to learn Chinese because that wasn’this vision of himself.

“I was an ESL (English as a second-language) studentthrough at least the second grade,” he says. “Iremember an exasperated teacher finally asking, ‘What language CAN you speak?’”

Flash forward to the past week, when the host of TV’s Amazing Race: China Rush bounced into Beijing full of snappy banter that flowed freely between English and Mandarin.

Last weekend, one-time VJ Wu was exhorting a crowd of American expats at the Temple Theater to chant “You pengzi yuanfang lai, buyi lehu (We are happy when friends visit from afar)”. That traditional Chinese saying was morphed into “Booey Lehoo”, the name of last night’s concert – emceed by Wu – that featured a slew of US and Chinese show-biz folk who support US President Barack Obama’s 100,000 Strong Initiative.
That campaign is designed to boost the number of Americans studying in China from 13,000 to 100,000 in just four years.
Wu himself first came to China not as a student but an actor wanna-be.
He had been working as a model with the Ford agency in LA, with some VJ gigs on the side. “I liked representing the Asian community in the States,” he says, but he grew tired of being “taken” in a fashion shoot with eight Anglo-Americans, three Latinos, two blacks and himself.
“I wanted to be an actor, and I wanted to work in an environment where I was part of the majority,” he says.
So he snagged a $100 flight to Asia as a documents courier, and auditioned to be a VJ for MTV in Taipei. “I had to introduce a Smashing Pumpkins video” and got the job despite one small problem. “Your Mandarin is absolutely atrocious,” Wu recalls being told.
“But we see something in you.”
That “something” could have been his gift for gab, or the raw zest for life that makes images of the muscle-shirted actor leap from his web page.
Resisting one last tug from his life in LA, “I had just gotten my personal trainer certification so I didn’t have to do the “waiter in between acting gigs thing”. Wu took the plunge.
“It was REALLY hot and humid, and my mother asked me, ‘Why do you want to come here, after we sacrificed so much to come to the US and give you the opportunities there?”
“It was so, so ironic,” he says, laughing at the memory of himself as a child, so determined to be American, not Asian. “But she was very supportive when she realized how serious I was” about the opportunities on this side of the Pacific.
He felt very alone at first, but buckled down to study Mandarin and savored the “cool” job at MTV, where his main responsibility was interviewing foreign artists like Julio Iglesias and Mariah Carey as they came through Taipei. When his one-year contract was up, however, he was off to Hong Kong looking for movie roles.
“That was back to the starving actor life again,” he says. “I just didn’t mesh with the place as quickly as I did in Taiwan, and while I was still trying to learn Mandarin, suddenly Cantonese was a whole new challenge.”
He planned to move on to Shanghai within a year, but fate intervened.
Wu had some part-time work in Singapore – he hosted the CommunicAsia show for a Japanese telecom giant, among other gigs. “On one trip I was checking out some agencies – there are great photographers out there, etc. – when one agency rep said to me, ‘When I look at you, I see dollar signs!’”
That was flattering, Wu says with a monster grin, “but I told her that I’d done the modeling thing and what I really wanted was to act.” So she introduced him to a talent manager in Singapore, and suddenly he had a contract to make Chinese TV dramas.
His new employers were “keen on new faces”, he says, and he found himself playing the lead in what turned into a blockbuster Chinese drama even though he still couldn’t speak Mandarin very well.
“Those were some really dark days, messing up my lines all the time,” he recalls. But he relished the challenge. “That’s an intense way to learn language, being in somebody’s face all the time and having to say the lines,” he says. The producers eventually decided to dub him, which was commonly done anyway, but Wu was disappointed not to be using his own voice. He won that chance back, “but not until about my third drama there.”
It was a great job, Wu says, but when he learned that the producers of TV’s The Amazing Race were auditioning potential hosts for an Asian version of the show, he was itching for the job.
“There were a lot of people gunning for that – hit show, fun concept, lots of travel,” he says. “I had been a contestant on Fear Factor, so I was a big reality-show junkie.” The candidates were narrowed down to three, and Wu says he got picked both for his on-camera skills and because once, during a sudden thunderstorm, he delighted a producer by roaring onto the set on his motorcycle, dripping wet.
After a few seasons, he was approached by another company about doing a Amazing Race show for China, and once that group secured the rights to do the show officially, Wu was once again ready to pack for Shanghai.
In the meantime, he had spent 10 years in Singapore, married actress Wong Li-lin and become half of a celebrity couple. He also became the father of two children.
At home, he often found himself talking like his parents. “It was that cross-culture irony again,” he says. “The whole time in Singapore, I’m saying to the kids that ‘You gotta speak more Chinese!’”
After agreeing to host Amazing Race: China Rush, Wu jokes that he laid down an ultimatum: “You don’t want to learn Chinese, I’ll bring China to you!” And a few months ago, after the show’s second season, the family was settling in Shanghai.
“We’ll be looking for candidates, contestants for season three soon,” he says. Meanwhile, he’s bouncing from one Beijing stage to another, supporting the push to bring more American students to China. An “arts week” of events climaxed last night as he hosted the Booey Lehoo concert with Will.i.am, Shunza, John Legend, Sa Dingding and Coco Lee.
“What I love about the 100,000 Strong Initiative is that it’s not just aiming for gifted kids,” he says. Most stereotypes are not rooted in hostility but in a lack of interaction, he adds, and exposing young people from all parts of society to China’s culture is a big step forward.
You can contact the writer at michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn.
(China Daily 12/18/2011 page4)

Last night, we finally found out who was crowned the winners for the second season of The Amazing Race China Rush.  The race had come down to three teams comprised of Simon/Katherine, Sun Bin/Hao Fei-Er, and Jan/Lily.  Throughout the course of the race, the teams continually battled it out for overall supremacy, and it was difficult to determine who would arrive at the final Pit stop no matter how big your brain is!

In the The Amazing Race tradition, we were happy to have all the contestants join us once again for this momentous occasion, and they had a fun time reminiscing and recalling their adventures during the race…

And low and behold, it was the team of Jan and Lily that reached our final Pit Stop first, and Jan really enjoyed recounting how his team was able to take home the top prize to his fellow competitors and newfound friends…

Well, there you have it…we finally have our winners for another amazing season.  Like always, it’s been a pleasure and honor to work on such a fun and exciting production…

…but now I can finally stop standing and waiting for these teams to arrive cuz they’ve all checked in!!!

Thank you again for all your love and support…and watch out for our next season of The Amazing Race China Rush next year!!!

With the second season of The Amazing Race China Rush coming to an end this Sunday night, it’s time to start looking forward towards the next season.  In fact, Channel ICS organized an event earlier today to promote their lineup of shows for the upcoming year to their prospective sponsors, and I was invited to introduce and gush about how great the race has been, which definitely wasn’t very hard.

As the die-hard fans wonder who will be crowned champion for this second season, I’ve already been getting inquiries from all over the place regarding when people can start applying.  Right now, it’s still early in the game in terms of preparation and pre-production work, but it’s just exciting to know that ICS has already taken the step to lock down some big sponsors for our upcoming third season next year.  If everything goes according to the schedule for the previous two seasons, then you can expect to hear an announcement for “Call to Entry” around next February or March so definitely watch out for it.

This second season has been a huge success for both the English and Chinese market so I’m really excited myself to see how far we can go next season!  And if you’ve got a thirst for adventure and want to cherish a memory to last your entire lifetime, then start thinking about who you’d like to race with next season!

Til then, let’s get set for the climatic conclusion of TARCR2 this Sunday night at 8 PM on Channel ICS!  One shall rise…and Two shall fall!$^%#

And just like that, I’ve got one week under my belt here in Shanghai.  It’s been a manic week of house and school hunting in addition to situate myself as to how to go about business as per usual here in China.  Fortunately, The Amazing Race China Rush is in full swing, and the third episode will air this afternoon at 2 PM in Chinese on Dragon TV and then 8 PM in English on ICS.  Here are some pics from the episode later!

A day at the beach is always fun, but it’s a lot more stressful when you need to hurry up your lines with the oncoming teams fast on your tail.

Getting the lines down in English doesn’t pose too much of a problem, but this stuff translated on the spot in Chinese is an entirely different beast.  However, I love the challenge!

Wait…is this sorta a spoiler for what lies ahead for the team’s today?

…and also what lies inside this interesting looking crustacean critter!

Of course, everyone is waiting with anticipation to find out WHO will be the first team to arrive today so let’s get ready and enjoy the show!  :-)

Here is the first promo for the upcoming show…

While principle filming for the second season of The Amazing Race China Rush is over, the “fun” part is now on the move, which is Post Production.  This is the portion of production where an army of editors must look over all the footage and decide the most entertaining and worthy segments to share with the audience.  It’s an absolutely essential part of any program, and it’s ridiculously time-consuming.  I just heard the editing team is reviewing over ONE HUNDRED HOURS of footage per episode so they definitely got their work cut out for them.

During the course of the race when we’re traveling everywhere to film…

…we definitely try to minimize the amount of “excess footage” so the post production has a lesser amount to review later.  It’s definitely not always easy work…

…but we do what we can to put those smiles back on everyone’s faces.

Thanks again to our host cameraman Joe Matthews and his prehistoric 35mm for these candid shots.  It’s good to know you got some great shots with it once you finally got the film developed!

Now, it’s time to look over my script for a launch event later this evening.  More on having a “THWACK-in” good time to come soon!

We’re still in the thick of filming for The Amazing Race China Rush, and I finally got (sorta) a day off today so I just had to post a few pics up from our adventures thus far, especially since I’ve got a good internet connection here.

What I’ve realized is how easy it is to become detached from the rest of the world when I’m shooting these shows because it’s so busy with filming and traveling.  Everyone in the production is running on fumes and we have the tendency to forget which day of the week it is.

On the other hand, that can be a good thing because we should be all wrapped up and done with the newest season before we know it…hopefully!  I’ve been really fortunate to travel to places in China that I would most likely never venture towards on my own accord, and I can’t wait to share more pictures with you all once the show starts airing.

At this point, I’ve been hearing news that the premiere telecast will be in early July so that means there’s a lot of work to do between now and then.  For the first time in any of The Amazing Race franchises, we’ll be working on TWO different language versions of the show for the English and Chinese audience so that means double the “fun” for me too! ;-P

And until we get to that point, I’ve gotta be ready for  teams to open up their next clue so I can check them in so I’ll catch you later!