Why would I be?

No an American guy in Beijing who I met later dubbed my character, you will hear me saying "fire" in the second Lake Changjing though they didn't dub that.

Yeah in Wandering Earth 2 I was a featured extra and 5 of us and the main star shot our scenes in a small little spaceship for a few days. We spoke but nothing personal just pleasantaries. I spoke to Dante Lam too, I mentioned in the OP he asked where I was from.

Yeah I've lived here for 5 years now. Local in China? Chinese people were extremely envious, especially seeing how close I was working to one of their heroes. There are so many people here that doing something so special is even more special.

Then get a TEFL course and go teach English anywhere else then. There are lots of countries who are willing to pay native speakers to teach them.

That was indeed the most difficult parts, moving around was painful too as you could get caught in a COVID outbreak and have to quarantine for weeks at your own expense.

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I'm not sure why you ask about alcohol, alcohol is freely available here and the Chinese people that do drink love to drink very strong rice wine and a lot of it at once. There was only a little bit of weed and the people getting high were getting high on pharmacy drugs and synthetic weed but that has since been made illegal. I think it might have been illegal for the second movie but it was still widely available. Surveillance while endemic isn't instrusive if you're not breaking the law I guess. It's everywhere and if you just understand that you're a guest here and follow the rules you'll be fine.

The islands of Great Britain and Ireland I would say.

Other bit of the UK? Ireland isn't in the UK. If you have a degree in anything and no criminal convictions you can get a work visa here to teach English. You can apply from home and they will pay for an apartment and a very good salary. I'm not sure about flights as I made my own way here. It's a good life and as a foreigner here you're treated very well in general, in some of the smaller cities you'd be a local celebrity just for being foreign. I live in a city of 11m people though so no such luck for me.

It was worse than the military being honest, not finding out you're working until a few hours before a shift. Being sent on your "day off" at very short notice because some other guy didn't turn up, being just a number etc.

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The experience was worth it though, and I made some life long close friends. The money is more than enough to live on here if one were to take that path.

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I will not be answering any more calls, the agents take 75% of the money that the talent should get and I returned to my previous career in software engineering. I have heard accounts of people who have acted in major roles in movies here being told in the UK it's not worth anything and they need to start at the ground floor again if they were to move home.

I never had any interest in China whatsoever until I met my wife in Ireland and after a couple of years of long distance, I decided to move here to be with her. I have a career in software engineering that I only took a break from for a year and did this as something to get by.

In general, foreigners were treated better than the Chinese extras for sure, but for the first two movies we were treated quite badly, like cattle herded to the set. It was entirely due to what you said though, lack of care to cut costs. We weren't there to be movie stars. On Wandering Earth 2 though we were treated like royalty as I was hired to be a featured extra. There were some times when it felt like discrimination but in reality it was more to do with not being able to communicate with people because I don't speak any Chinese.

Thanks for reading, I'm glad you got something out of it.

Sorry yeah my mistake I thought I was more common. I will edit for clarity, thanks for pointing that out.

Yeah they really do because they need to attract people for even the most basic role, there are a very limited supply of foreigners in China right now. I know people who started their careers with me and are now making a very good living from TV/movies and commercials. I have gone back to my original career in Fintech though. For a start I probably always was, but after a year of playing the gig life, always looking for work, never being certain of it, and the "agents" here stealing most of your money, I was glad for normal work again.

I used to be on the worktop, but I moved onto in the cupboard because living in China now my kitchen is much smaller.

The guys who got the featured extra bits and repeated roles were mostly native English speakers (Western European, North American, South Africa etc) or if there was no speaking involved then Russian/Eastern European. Every single scene was shot like we were going to use the original audio and then they dubbed absolutely everything, even the actual Americans.

They tried some weird stuff with makeup and hair dye before the movie started to make the Central Asian guys look more Western but it was an atrocity. Giving them blonde hair and white-face.

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Some of the biggest scenes had everybody on set and Chinese people looking the other way wearing US uniforms. A good chunk of guys probably never even went to set once.

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We were at one of the studios at Hengdian all night a couple of nights but never shot just sat in our chairs all night upstairs, I don't remember the number but there weren't many anyway so it was < 10. We also did the "training" for the second movie in the free space between the studios in Hengdian with mattresses to fall on etc. But the majority of it, such as the video I attached, were all shot outside at a huge couple of scenes they created from scratch with blue screen all around and the artillery and US base built and covered in the fake plastic snow.

I did it for money, they paid well at a time I didn't have any work, I did a lot of television and internet commercials in the same year. At the same time it's going to be really nice to show my grandkids I was in a couple of movies. I started working again in Fintech (Financial Technology) a few months ago. I have read about other people who had much larger roles than me in Chinese movies who are unable to use that experience as a foothold into Western TV so I am glad I didn't intend on it being my career.

Really, really good! Things have rarely been better than right this very moment thank you :)