Daytime television, Chinese-style

The other day we got second-row seats to witness the bizarre, saccharine fantasyland that is the Chinese charity talk show.

We were allowed to watch the pre-taping of a show set to air around New Years on the English-language International Channel Shanghai. The show profiled a Pudong migrant children's school's English-language program and the corporate volunteers doing the teaching. It was an orgy of tut-tutting, back-patting and self-righteous cooing. It was a painful and fascinating spectacle to watch.

The show started out credibly enough. The host began with interviews with politicians, educators and academics about education for the children of Shanghai's migrant workers, who consistently fall through the cracks in the state's ostensible nine years of compulsory public education. They chatted and passed around softball questions and answers about what a terrible situation it is, how all levels of government are doing all they can and how great it is that there are volunteers and private organizations more than happy to pick up the slack.

The second round of interviews was with people from the private organizations co-ordinating and supplying the volunteers doing the teaching. This is where a lot of the back-patting came in, as the head honcho of this one company waxed lyrical about making the world a better place by bringing English to the masses.

Mmmkay.

These interview sessions were interspersed with videos of lucky migrant children in these underfunded, resource-poor schools, with perky Anglophone volunteers talking about how great it is to work with kids who're trained to behave in class and respond in unison.

The most excruciatingly cringe-inducing block, however, came when a sister and brother were led in front of the cameras, along with their mother, as the host posed condescending questions about their sick father and their New Year's wishes. All three hapless individuals were brought to tears when the children were asked about their dreams--to become doctors and help their dad, who has had two strokes and can't work or even leave the house.

The whole thing felt like an eerie cross between The Maury Show and World Vision commercials. Icky, syrupy and insincere in its hypersincerity.

But the kids got complimentary sweat bands at the end...so that makes it all better, right?