MC - Master of Cooperation

Hello Everyone,

     I'm very excited for this week because this Friday and Saturday I will be hosting the 4th annual "World Hand in Hand Art Festival" held at the Harbin Institute of Technology. This Art Festival is a night where various cultural performances (such as singing, dancing, instrument playing, etc.) will be displayed in front of an audience comprised of over 1800 foreign and Chinese students from 101 regions around the world. What's more, this year is special because it will be the first time this event is spread across two nights and on the two biggest HIT campuses (before it was only one night and held on only one campus).

      I'm very blessed to have this opportunity and for the past couple of weeks I have been busy preparing our MC script and leading my three fellow MC's in our rehearsals. It's been a great experience so far working with my international peers as I've learned subtle differences in how we think. For example, when reading "1800" we Americans commonly say "Eighteen-hundred" but my Russian friends say "One-thousand, eight hundred". Furthermore, my international friends helped me to understand that not everyone "thinks" English like I do. For example in my audition to be an MC I said:

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"Tonight’s performances are a major step in strengthening cross-cultural relationships. Therefore, let tonight’s singing, dancing, and other brilliant performances all act as shining testaments to the power of cooperation and as fuel to motivate us all to realize our dreams."

{Context: The theme of the 4th annual "World Hand in Hand Art Festival" is DREAM.

I'm speaking about how we can, through cooperation, fulfill the dream of raising future leaders who possess cross-cultural understanding.}

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     Now although in America this would be a solid line in a speech, here in China I cannot

just say such a line in English and expect 100% comprehension from my Chinese and other international peers whose first language is not English. Here in China, I have indeed experienced

the traditional Chinese value of "society over self"  in that in my MC eyes it became "audience over self". In light of this, I revised my speech and language use to better accommodate audience comprehension and our new script for the upcoming show is more concise, funny, and interactive. 

     We MC's definitely cooperated with and learned from one another. For example, my fellow MC friend told me we should include a funny dialogue scene to make the audience laugh and I incorporated her feedback into our script. Here's what we came up with:

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LIDIA: What’s your dream Sam?

SAM: My dream is to have more friends in my country!

EMMA: Sam, your dream is too small. Why only one country when you can have friends in ALL OF ASIA?   

EUGENE: Well, Asia's nice, but do you know what is better? My dream is to be friends with everyone in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD! ...What’s your dream Lidia?

LIDIA: My dream is simple... BUY AS MANY DRESSES AS I WANT!!!

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     A little feedback can go a long way and thanks to my Russian friend's suggestions we were able to come up with this clever dialogue hahaha

     I was also able to give some feedback in other areas as well such as when I came across that after

a school VP's speech we went directly into the next part. I suggested that we should thank

the speaker for his words and ask the audience to give him another round of applause (as this is a common courtesy/practice as a host of a show). My friends and my faculty adviser listened to me and we were able to revise our script to include this small, but important part to give proper respect to our speaker. 

     All in all, through this experience I gained greater appreciation for the power of cooperation as shown in that our script is more funny than it was before and better able to deliver respect where respect is due. Moreover, I am again reminded to put others before myself and this way of thinking ("society over self" and in this case "audience over self") really guided me and my peers as we wrote the script and as I revised it. 

     Wish me luck this Friday and Saturday, I will do my best!