Hello everyone and welcome to America under the Microscope advanced episode. Hello Lulu.

Hi James.

So we're gonna continue our talk about fairs, and last time we said we're gonna talk about the competitions that we hold in fairs.

Yes, sounds intriguing, what kind of competitions, among farmers or？

Yeah, actually that's, that's true. A lot of farmers and ranchers and staff will take animals to the fair, their livestock. I mentioned you can see the cows and all these things there.

Cows, pigs, chickens...

And they're actually competing based on things like size, healthiness and stuff like this.

Wow.

And same with other things, so they'll compete with produce. So like here's the common stereotypes like pumpkin competition, who has grown the biggest pumpkin.

Now here is the question: who is judge?

The judge will be usually other farmers or other community members.

OK.

And produce will be based on things like, you know look, color, smell, taste and things like this. They'll do this for the artisanal goods, they'll do this for the crafts as well, and then they win a blue ribbon for first prize.

There must be so many different categories. Who has the best cows, best pigs, best chicken.

Yeah, there's a pretty long list of things you can compete. And for the most part you don't win any money. You just kind of win, you know, bragging rights, like I have a blue ribbon for quilt making or I have an award winning pig.

You know it sounds like a much simpler life and it's, it's fun. So apart from livestock and produce, did they also compete in like handcrafts?

Sure sure. So they'll, you know, compete the quilts, the crocheting, all that stuff will have competitions. They also compete in like wine making competitions in my hometown, so they'll compete with that; there'll even be competitions for children's crafts. So like maybe there was a competition for artwork from children. Yeah. So there's all kinds of things there.

But there's lots of artisanal things as well. Artisanal like, for example, like jam, think that's in England that they do a lot of preserves, jams, that sort of thing.

But for animals, usually after the competitions, the animals are then auctioned off.

Oh is it...are all the animals that get entered into the competition auctioned off or just one with... who's winning the first price?

No, that'll be really up to the farmer themselves whether they want to. So they'll be an auction and people will, you know, bid for them, the animal to buy. And the reasons why they may bid on an animal might be for breeding purposes because if it's a really healthy animal and that might lead to other healthy animals in the future.

Then I guess it wouldn't hurt if the animal got a blue ribbon.

You are right.

You probably can't stand; the starting price would probably be much higher. Um so one thing that I was wondering is that the organizers of the fairs, they are the local governments or to say whatever governments, but what about all these people who are working at the fair? Because it sounds like a big event, there will be people who are standing behind all these food stalls, who are organizing all the ...

So there are several things. So the food stalls themselves, usually these are actually traveling businesses, so like food cars that go from fair to fair to fair to fair, and then make money this way. Same with the carnival, it's a contract with a carnival company that comes and those people work for the carnival company. But there's also a lot of volunteers. So there will be volunteers who will help with ticket sales, there will be volunteers who help just with general information. I had friends that used the fair as a fund raising opportunity.

Fund raising?

Yeah they belong to an organization and they had a food stall, so they volunteered to work on the food stall and they made money this way.

Okay. So perhaps it said charitable organization or perhaps it's just what kind of events that they want to hold.

And I've done this as a kid, working at a, selling soda at rodeo at a fair, going up and down the stairs, you know, selling Coca Cola or popcorn and things like that.

And then to...

For fund raising.

For fund raising. When you said volunteer, why would people volunteer for this kind of events? It's, is it just because they feel like the sense of community, this is something they cherished and they want to help the local community?

Partially, for children, it also looks good on your college applications.

So it's a, there are perhaps other motives.

And for places like my hometown which is a very agricultural community, kids will take time off school to do this.

Oh.

It is very normal for the schools to say, or the parents to ask the schools like, oh my child needs these days off because they're doing stuff at the fair. The school will be like okay.

So would you say this is pretty common for kids that are growing up in United States?

In agricultural region, very common; in a city, I would say not common at all.

Because you don't really have that sort of fairs.

Yeah.

The sense of community is much much stronger in rural areas.

Yeah, you have to rely on each other a bit more.

So those were all about volunteering, about people helping out, raising funds for charitable organizations, blah blah blah...What about commercialization? I'm sure there will be people who are making money, actual money from this.

It is a thing that happens. So there are companies that try to contract with fairs so like say for example, a drink company that they'll contract with these fairs like, you can only sell our drink products, or you can only sell our beer or you can only sell our things. And then we'll have our advertisements everywhere.

Oh, so it's advertising and like sponsorship banners.

Yeah. But they also will limit what products can be sold like at the food and drinks booth.

Is it very common?

It's quite common at bigger affairs. Yeah. And this can be irritating to some people because maybe they don't normally sell this product because maybe they sell different products. But for this fair if they want to operate here, they must sell the product that the sponsor is selling.

I think perhaps some people would feel like this is defeating the whole purpose of a community fair, and then if you get the big business involved.

Yeah that's, a lot of people feel that way. They say things like, they should be able to sell what they want. It should be that. But then the other side is someone's got to pay for the organization of these.

Sure, sure. It is a real dilemma there. What about media coverage? Do these county fairs get reported?

In local media newspapers, local television stations, news, radio, absolutely. They will send people down to take pictures or you know, do a news broadcast saying how things are going. So this will make the news. They'll do, the TV will do what we call fluff pieces on like the exhibitions, like the winners or the blue ribbon winners or make a interview for local TV stations and things like that.

Everything pretty local. Are there any big fairs? I'm assuming some of the state fairs will get some national TV coverage.

Some, there are big fairs. I mean even Los Angeles county has a fair.

Oh, I bet that's quite popular.

Imagine it is, I've never been to it but LA County is a massive county with a huge population. My state has a fair in it last almost a whole month. And these state fairs can be really big because state fairs can invite big name musical acts, they can have large rodeos, they get more funding. Their carnivals are almost to the level of some amusement parks.

Wow. So all sounds like great fun. If you're ever in the United States and it is fair season. Well it's quite long, from late spring to early fall.

I would say mid fall.

Mid fall, if you have a chance, try to go to one of these fairs, it sounds an absolute blast.

Yes, I highly recommend it.

All right, so if you have been to this kind of events, share your experience with us in the comment section or share any of your experiences going to similar events in China or other countries in the world. We would really appreciate your comments. I'll see you next time.

Bye everyone.

Bye.