Three foreign stars are born

There is something thrilling about being friends with someone about to become famous. In Beijing I have lots of friends who are about to be famous. One is mostly done with a hilarious book about zombies invading the city. Another is starring in a movie about a goofy foreigner unable to make it back home and who seeks his fortune in Beijing.

These projects are bound to work, because there is something deeply funny about the clash of Western and Chinese culture in the Beijing of 2012. On the surface, Beijing seems like another big city, especially to anyone who came here after the Olymics. But add interactions between hapless naïve foreigners and the local culture, and hilarity ensues. The material practically writes itself. ("Why does my neighbor always ask where I'm going?" "Just say you are going out, he doesn't really care.")

A new television show airing on the CCTV 9 documentary channel is a case in point. The star is 25-year-old Pole, Justyna Szpakowska.

In Restaurant on the Move, Szpakowska travels throughout China, learning about traditional culture and trying out local food. This is a conventional Chinese travel format, but when you plunk a 183-centimeter foreign blonde woman who speaks perfect Chinese into the mix, it acquires a certain charm.

For example, upon trying the food, Szpakowska does not automatically squeal with delight and declare it to be delicious.

This brings up another delightful paradox of the show. Towering over all the other Chinese on screen, with her wild locks of blond hair askew, and her over-the-top Chinese skills, she is very much playing the role of the typical foreigner, while eating food that would make most Chinese a little queasy.

After the second episode aired, Justyna quickly checked her Sina Weibo account to gauge the response.

"They said I was very natural - different from typical Chinese hosts," she beamed.

Justyna is studying how to be a television host at the university that trains many of those seen on CCTV. This seems to be a good time for foreigners attending Communications University of China (CUC), famous for training some of China's most famous television hosts. Szpakowska's classmate Michael Ryan is an aspiring pop idol, singing and dancing on Superboy.

Both Ryan and Szpakowska are using their excellent Chinese as a selling point. But CUC instructor Carlos Ottery turns his lousy Chinese into a strength as he plays a lovable loser trying to get any job other than teaching English in the film Gee. A lot of people talk as if the "golden age" of opportunities for foreigners living in Beijing passed with the Olympics, but a country with 1.3 billion people will always be somewhat paved with gold. As these three rising stars show, the golden age for foreigners is just dawning.