BBC - China Production Stories

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It's Children's Day here in China today!

But we didn't get to celebrate. We had to get up early (6am, so it's not actually that early, I suppose) to go and meet Mr Liu for his second day of filming. After the hustle and bustle of the factory we were looking for a nice quiet day with him. He was going to see his family in a very rural area about 3 hours from here in central Chongqing.

He takes the bus and so we thought we might get some nice quiet shots of him getting on to that. Not likely. You should have seen this bus - it was packed. Not a space on it. About 5 folk jumped on in but I have no idea how they actually managed to get in. As our man tried to board, the doors were closed and off the bus went.

Bus number 2 came along 20 minutes later but the driver saw our camera and put his foot down, leaving us and a bunch of confused/mildly annoyed locals wondering if we would have any luck with the next one.

This time luck was on our side though and JP, Mr Liu and I jumped on board for the journey into the country (closely followed by the rest of the team in our production bus). It was hot, a bit whiffy (well it would be - it was full and then some) and we had to stand most of the way. Not ideal.

It was worth it though as our trip to the country was great. We had such a fantastic time, saw some eye popping scenery, met lovely people and got some great footage of Mr Liu and his family relaxing, eating and catching up in the middle of the greenest paddy fields I have ever seen.

Tempted by the public transport as we were, JP and I took the production bus back.

Gerald's next entry

JP has taught me how to write 1 - 10 using a simplified Chinese script. I never dreamed I'd be using it a couple of days later surrounded by paddy and corn fields in the middle of rural Sichuan.

While the crew were filming our migrant family having lunch I made friends with two kids from the next farm. We played a game called "up high, down low, on the side, too slow". It involved me giving lots of high-fives then pulling my hand away when the girls tried to give one back - they found this hilarious. As my Mandarin is so limited I couldn't chat with the girls so I decided to get a pad of paper out and draw. We all drew together - flowers, plants, hearts, butterflies and each other-- then I remembered I knew how to write some Chinese. I carefully drew the symbols for the numbers that I could recall and the girls wrote the numeric equivalent on top. I felt really lucky and privileged to meet these two lovely country girls and as I waved goodbye from our crew bus I wondered what their future would be - I hope it will be full of exciting opportunities, new friendships and much happiness.

Maria's next entry