Not to beat the Oscar panda to death or anything, but anyone who saw the same CCTV Oscar pre-show that I saw must have watched the amazing red-carpet reporter Liu Shuai (刘帅) with similar awe and fascination.

First of all, I get more and more impressed each year with CCTV’s penetration of the paparazzi scrum right before the show. Mainland China is becoming more and more of a red carpet force, and Dick Cheney must be shivering in his quail-hunting boots.

Secondly, Liu Shuai showed some real entertainment-media cajones, calling out to celebrities (and many pseudo-celebrities) by first name.

“Nicole! Gwyneth! Leo! Tom!”

My brother and I cracked up everytime an actor sidled up to Liu Shuai thinking he mattered, only to be disappointed that it was some wild Chinese dude who didn’t really have any mind-blowing questions to ask. Once he got the interviewee to walk over, Liu usually plucked from his extensive list of questions, show below:

  • Are you excited to be here?
  • Can you wish the Chinese people a happy Chinese New Year?

At first, the parade of interviewees was long on the “unknown” (writers, directors of foreign-language films, Tom Hanks’ dog-walker), and it didn’t seem that Liu’s shrieking was doing any good. Most of the actors he got were polite, but you could see the looks on their faces as they thought to themselves: “Dude, I’m talking to some guy who doesn’t know who I am but who’s paying a buck to get a copy of my hard-earned work on DVD!”

Later on, Liu blew our minds by scoring some actual celebrities. Kudos to Rachel Weisz, who was gracious and friendly and totally awesome, as usual. Boo to Celine Dion, who ushered over to Liu asking “are you from Japan? Japanese?” And then when told she was being asked over by a Chinese guy, paused and said: “Hello, Chinese! Hello, China! Wow…far.” I’m going to pull her hair out one day, I swear.

Then Liu got the coolest dude of ‘em all, none other than Dirty Harry. It was great to see the bemused look on his face as Liu scrambled to ask something relevant. And even more awesome when Eastwood’s wife told him to say “Gong Hay Fat Chow” into the camera.

And with that, CCTV ended its red carpet coverage for its butchered telecast of the ceremony. Almost all of the Ellen Degeneres bits were cut out, and the “In Memoriam” tribute and all the montages, which are my favorite moments of the show, were absent. Apparently, I also missed Jack Black, Will Ferrell, and John C. Reilly doing something funny, which totally sucks for me.

But, I’ll always remember the amazing Liu Shuai, fearlessly screaming for famous people to come over and answer his vapid questions. It’s good to see that the Mainland is catching up with the rest of the world.