Oops, I did it again.

and procrastinated for a ridiculous amount of time.

And there you have it, I’ve not only somehow gotten an annoying Britney Spears song stuck in my head, but I’ve done it to you now, too.  I’d apologize, but I’m too busy already feeling guilty about taking too much time to write this newsletter.  

It’s funny, really, since there’s nothing that I like more than writing.  Genuinely.  Ok, except for writing reports at the theater for my boss’ approval in Beijing.  Bureaucratic Chinese is a special form of the language I love that is devoid of most joy and full of tedium.  

But I digress.

Instead, I’m going to happily share that I finally got in add a little bit of myself into one of the podcasts I do for SupChina’s China Stories series.  And this also prompted a couple of old Beijinger friends (expats who had left, sadly) to reach out and it is SO nice to have an excuse to connect with them.  I may not have collected much in the way of capital assets in my years abroad but I certainly have stored away a hoard of amazing friendships.

Speaking of friendships, I have found someone who I just adore, a little 3 yr old named Duomi.  Her mom, Amy, is also super cool, but Duomi and JoVi get along so well together, and Duomi is just so sweet and caring to JoVi, who is not quite a full year younger.  Either way, we had a playdate where I got to do some cool influencer stuff - there’s a crazy-cool shoe brand with a big green bear as the mascot and I got to play mahjong (ahem, majiang keeps getting autocorrected by the spellchecker, ugh!)

So after I went through the whole rigamarole of celebrity stuff (ha!) I got a swag bag of… nope, not shoes, but crayfish sausages!  Yup.  Ma La crayfish sausages. (???) Then we continued on with our day long adventure at a dinosaur park, where there were actual dinosaurs!  Well, they weren’t alive, but they were robots, and they were cool!   We even got to ride around on a dinosaur shaped scooter that blasted out Chinese club music.  We had such a good time!

And apparently I was abducted by aliens - either that or I so successfully procrastinated on writing this newsletter that literally months went by before I actually got around to sitting down and working on it.  I blame my job, in part because I have a Chinese boss, therefore insane expectations of my time and emotional devotion, in part because it is a brand new little baby of a theater and needs all the attention and care of an actual human baby (if not more!)

Quick update on everything else that has happened since: I’m in talks with a really awesome local magazine to do a stage version of one of their top children’s stories (yay!) and it is so incredibly exciting to get back to creating theater, I just cannot express it well enough via written words, I wish I could read aloud this newsletter to you!  (Ooh, maybe that’s a thought!  Would anyone actually want this?)

I’ve had more and more success on Douyin (and my Intl TikTok ain’t doing so bad either!)  This video got two around 2.5 million views on Douyin - and then a Chinese diplomat posted it to Twitter, the city of Chengdu’s account retweeted… and its made the rounds there, too.  I go off beat halfway through the “rap” but fortunately most people don’t seem to mind.  I liked doing this video because I’m talking about my awesome new home (yay Chengdu!) But also bringing a bit of my former home and first love (Beijing) into it at the end ;)

So now that I’ve had a few of my videos go viral, I created a new gag for my English language standup set that relies heavily on the use of a lame prop: a red net!  I was inspired by the punnage around internet celebrity (网红 wang hong) and red net（红网 hong wang).  I’ve also finally gotten a deal to start promoting a mulberry fruit syrup and preserves product on Douyin - I think that this means I am actually an influencer now?

I was wearing a Chinaccelerator t-shirt the other day and walked into a new coffeeshop soft opening around the corner (there are now more than a dozen indie coffee shops on my block!) and the owner recognized the logo and it turns out he’d worked with the Chinaccelerator folks back in Shanghai around the same time I had.  Very small world!  Well, when he asked me what I was doing for business now I immediately thought of two things:  1) building the new theater business from the ground up and 2) building up the business of my personal brand/wanghong-ness.  Once you get into the startup mindset it really is hard to get away.  

In that way, too, I guess my little one is my most important startup venture so far!  Her language skills in both English and Chinese are improving in leaps and bounds and I have to admit I just love the way she creates a fusion of the two!  No guolai! Meiyou eggs!

Ok, I am going to try, again, to get back to writing this update weekly, I appreciate the peer pressure because its easy to just let it slide, but staying connected is so important and even though I post a lot to social media, those little snippets aren’t quite enough.  This past weekend I missed a dear friend’s wedding back in America, but I was thrilled to have another one of our friends read out my toast at the reception, so at least I got to be there in spirit.

Thank you for reading this and please reach out when you have time :)

~ Elyse