BBC - China Production Stories

This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Find out more about page archiving.

We filmed at a hospital today where they use a mix of Western and traditional Chinese approaches.

It was a tight squeeze fitting everyone into the consultant's surgery - we had the doctor, who's called Mr Hao, with his patient, a nurse, JP and Dave, George, the government official and me! Gerald sensibly decided to wait outside next to a long line of patiently waiting patients. JP had to film everything handheld so he could move about. There was no room for lights so we used what was available naturally and I think it looked pretty good. I was watching a small portable monitor which was connected to the camera by a long cable along with Dave's sound equipment and as we filmed the doctor it was like performing a crazy dance. We were trying to avoid bumping into one another; trying not to trip over each others cables and trying to stay out of shot.

When you are filming real events for a documentary you just have to "follow the action" rather than keep stopping and rearranging where people are sitting or repeating things that they have said. I occasionally asked George to get the doctor to explain out loud what he was doing (especially when the patient started sticking his tongue out at him). This seemed to work quite well. At the end of the examination we did ask Mr Hao's permission to film a few things again for close-up cutaways, like the doctor taking the patient's pulse and looking at the x-rays, but other procedures we couldn't ask to be repeated like the acupuncture treatment - which was not for the faint-hearted or those with a fear of needles.

I decided to film a traditional "sit down" interview with the doctor just in case the ob doc stuff didn't work. This was quite a torturous process:- I asked a question, George translated the question, the doctor answered the question (often for ten minutes without stopping), George would then translate the answer for me then I would have to decide if the answer was what I wanted or if it needed further explanation or simplification. It took about three times longer than a normal interview.

The hospital smelled very differently from one back home. Instead of antiseptic it smelt of herbs and spices, this is because the pharmacy, rather than containing shelves of pills and bottles of medicine, had drawer upon drawer of herbs, dried animals and minerals. I think on balance I'd rather pop a couple of aspirins than two scorpions and a centipede any day!

Maria's next entry