China Stories

Step back in time.

31st May 2008, Gerald

I have bored everyone we met today with this story to I might as well bore you with it too.

We came all the way to China to film someone who has migrated from the country into a city and what job should I find them doing? None other than a job I did myself about 12 years ago for a year! (I should state to be clear, this job still exists in the UK, I am not making any kind of statement about shifting labour or anything. That's for you, the audience, to think about when you see the film).

Anyway, it was really strange. We set up to film our man, Mr Liu, in his factory and all his colleagues were working on big green machines, pressing out shapes from sheets of metal and bending other bits of metal to be used in car parts.

I had to hold back from having a wee pop myself! Just to see if I still had the old magic.

But I had another job to do. I had to get on with filming for the day. And filming I did. It went really well. You won't believe some of the things we filmed. Very different conditions here indeed. I'll say one thing. 6 people to a bed room. That's all I'm saying...

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On call.

31st May 2008, Maria

Most children in China are given or choose a Western name as well as a Chinese one so that foreigners like me can pronounce and remember it.

While the crew were filming in the men's dorm, I took the opportunity to chat to my new chums from the factory, Queenie and Lee.

We were enjoying the calm of the courtyard with just a distant cuckoo for company when - like many places I've visited in China - the peace was shattered by a mobile phone, however this time it was Queenie letting me hear her favourite band called "S.H.E.", a girl group from Taiwan. They sound very much like pop stars from the UK - they sang about love, had nice voices and sung to a pleasant backing track, they were just a wee bit too saccharine for my tastes so I let Queenie and Lee hear my ringtone which is Kings of Leon's "On Call". They politely swayed to the music and looked a little surprised when the guitar kicked in, but I explained it was a love song too and they said they liked it - although I have a sneaking suspicion the Kings of Leon won't be getting a number one hit anytime soon this side of Chongqing.

Cuckoo!

7th June 2008

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Technical problems.

31st May 2008, Alasdair

I had planned to post videos so you could see what's been happening as I film the television crew at work. Although I've been filming, technical problems have meant that it hasn't been possible to transfer those images to our computer. The two devices, camera and computer, aren't talking to each other, according to the IT experts back in Glasgow.

However - I've now bought another cable from a computer shop here in Chongqing, where we'll be staying for the next week. This means that I'll (finally) be able to feed the video into the laptop via a third piece of equipment - an external drive. I'll try to send my edited pieces of video to the office in Glasgow at the beginning of the week. I hope it works this time - I'll let you know!