Media : Touring Chinese Censorship With ‘Foreign Gals in Beijing’ : Actors from abroad are newly popular. But most of them play bad guys and bad girls.

BEIJING — A job with a public relations firm brought American Rachel DeWoskin to Beijing in September.

Since then she’s made headlines in the Chinese newspapers, been interviewed by China Central Television and filmed by a visiting American television network.

But it had nothing to do with her public relations job.

DeWoskin, 22, who grew up in Michigan and graduated last year from Columbia University in New York, is one of eight foreigners--three Americans, two Russians, one Japanese, one German and a Serb--who have joined the cast of “Foreign Gals in Beijing,” a 20-part television series about the lives of foreign students that will debut before the world’s largest television audience this summer.

After years in which only a rare foreign face graced Chinese television, programming featuring foreigners has become an overnight trend. Recent television series have included parts ranging from overbearing foreign bosses to Russian women struggling to make a living in northeast China.

What has not changed much--in keeping with a tradition of xenophobia dating back centuries--is that most of the foreign roles are bad guys or, in this case, bad gals.

Rachel DeWoskin plays Jessie, a spoiled, wealthy American student who seduces Li Tianming, a married-with-child tour guide, pays his wife off and takes him back to the United States.

In one episode, after dancing up a storm at a hotel disco, Jessie takes Tianming upstairs, sits him down on the bed and says, “We love each other, so what are we waiting for?” Frustrated by his hesitation, she asks him incredulously, “You can’t love anyone besides your wife?”

Throughout history, Chinese have looked at foreigners as barbarians, as invaders intent on slicing up China and, since the 1949 revolution, as enemies of Communism.

Foreigners are dabizi --big noses. Foreigners are kaifang --too open with their feelings. Foreigners are youqian --rich. Foreigners engage in free love.

The breakthrough for foreigners acting in Chinese television productions came in 1993 with the hit series “A Beijinger in New York.”

Starring former American diplomat Robert Daly and Chinese star Jiang Wen of “Red Sorghum” film fame, the show captivated Chinese audiences who wanted to see what life is like for their compatriots living in the United States. The 21-part “Beijinger” is being rebroadcast.

In fact, other than the late President Richard Nixon, basketball player Michael Jordan and a handful of pop stars, Daly may be the best known American face in China, thanks to the long-running series.

After the phenomenal success of the “Beijinger” series, directors began to seek foreign actors. The influx of thousands of foreign students in recent years, many of whom speak excellent Chinese and are willing to work for a Chinese salary, gave them a pool of actors.

China’s central propaganda department still screens television shows and movies after directors finish editing and before audiences can view them. In most cases only those productions with what is deemed a socially redeeming theme pass the test.

Although “Foreign Gals” director Wang Binglin denies any moral didactic purpose in the series, it appears to be a typical warning of the social and emotional havoc a romantic relationship with a foreigner can bring.

While other series focus on economic issues, “Foreign Gals” tells the tale of cross-cultural romance. According to Wang, “It shows the differences between Western and Chinese culture, but in the end we see that everyone, no matter what nationality, pursues truth, goodness and beauty.” The plot is adapted from a book by Li Weihai, who interviewed more than 50 foreign women students in Beijing. Depicting everything from hygiene habits and language barriers to open sex and easy money, the story realistically depicts foreigners in Beijing, says director Wang.

Asked which scenes accurately depict her own life as a foreigner in Beijing, DeWoskin puts down her chopsticks, rests her chin on her folded hands and thinks long and hard, finally admitting not one scene comes to mind.

The series portrays foreigners’ lives as happily integrated with Chinese, but, she says, “foreigners and Chinese are not integrated. I never feel like I am an insider in China.”

Being in the series, in fact, opened her eyes to the harsh conditions in which Chinese actors work.

“Chinese actors have no leverage,” she observed. They are required to live in the studio dorms, eat in the studio cafeteria, wait around on the set for hours . . . and not complain. For 750 yuan ($90) per episode, “they own you,” DeWoskin said of the Beijing Movie Studio.

In “Foreign Gals,” many scenes have a lot more to say about Chinese than foreigners, and they say great things.

Chinese medicine cures an American’s cancer after Western medicine fails. The Chinese lead punches out the American guy who criticizes Chinese manners and ends up winning his girl.

The series also presents an idealized version of proper foreign behavior.

American Louise, played by a German acupuncture student, Karin Sigmund, loves everything about China without any prejudices. Her character falls in love the “Chinese way.” Louise and her Chinese boyfriend don’t even kiss before getting married.

“I don’t think it’s like that in Beijing anymore,” she said. “In many ways, I think DeWoskin’s character--Jessie--is more realistic than mine.”

Cathy McGregor, a psychologist living in Beijing, says that depicting foreigners in a negative light may be an attempt by the Chinese regime to convince citizens that despite the material advantages of the West, they are morally better off living in China and living with Chinese.

“Not that [living in] America is what every Chinese wants, but for most Chinese there is no choice,” McGregor said. “They are stuck here, stuck in their jobs.”

Chinese television is still in its infancy when it comes to dramatic series based on contemporary themes. The country’s first situation comedy, an “All in the Family” imitation entitled “I Love My Family,” debuted only last year. But even it is relegated to provincial channels. Knocking retired Communist Party cadres, the show hits too close to home.

There is also a generation gap. Director Wang is in his 50s. He is criticized by his younger staff for not reconsidering his perceptions about foreigners after working with them for more than two months.

But Wang is a veteran of the 10-year Chinese reign of terror known as the Cultural Revolution and is well trained in “self-criticism.” At the end of the interview, the creator of what will provide Chinese with 20 episodes peering into the corners of foreigners’ hearts, stood up, stretched and said:

“I still don’t really understand foreigners.”

(Tara Suilen Duffy, 22, a graduate of Connecticut College who recently studied Chinese art history at Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, is a part-time researcher in The Times’ Beijing Bureau.)