China Stories

At the airport, and... on your marks, get set, eat...

25th May 2008, Maria

We had our first "official" business meeting this evening. The Public Relations Officer and the Head of School at the Kung Fu Academy were invited to dinner at our hotel. We started by handing over our business cards with two hands as to give or receive something with one hand is deemed rude in China. We then had to explain the project and what we hoped to film the next day, this seemed to go on for a long, long, long, long time.

The food started arriving in dribs and drabs, but we couldn't eat anything until all the formalities were finished, all we could do was politely drink tons and tons of tea (and cross our legs). Eventually the conversation dried up and it was like someone had fired a starting pistol and everyone dug in with chopsticks flying.

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Like a rolling stone.

25th May 2008, Gerald

Today we left Beijing after, what is it, 10 days?

Up early to pack. I HATE packing. But it had to be done or I would be pretty stuck now. We met the rest of the crew at 11AM after checking out of the hotel and headed off in our fully packed up bus to Beijing airport. We had a tonne of kit. Everything had to be packed up for the rest of our trip right through to our next location; camera's, soundkit, tapes, lights, monitors, stands, everything. When we piled it all up at the check in desk it made quite an impressive stack.

Through passport control fine (although Maria did get some anti-bacterial handwash confiscated as the bottle was too large) and then onto the plane. Our internal flight to the Henan province took around an hour and a half. It was a pretty small plane and not that comfortable.

Arriving the first thing that hit me was the very different heat. It is much hotter than Beijing but there is more moisture in the air. Basically you sweat loads!

A two hour drive to the hotel later and it was time to unpack again. Hurrah.

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