My first Tsingtao

I'm sitting in an internet cafe down the street from the BFA drinking my first official Tsingtao (that I paid like 20 rmb for which is apparently overcharging and it's not that cold but WHATEVER) and reeling in all of the looks that I got on my way over here. I'll explain this later.

I woke up this morning and skyped with my Mom, then went to class. We watched two films in the morning by director Ou Ning, then we had lunch. After lunch we came back and talked with Ou Ning. The films of his that we watched in class were about cities and city life. They were both documentaries, and the guy knows his stuff. He started out by promoting Beijing rock n roll bands through a rock n roll magazine, then moved on to be commissioned by various governments to make films. San Yuan Li was my favorite of the two films of his that we watched. It depicted a city in Southern China and it's day to day life there. He discussed his next project, which was to go to the villages around the now-tourist trap province of Anhui and build a second economy there surrounding making furniture from the wood that grows there. He was recruiting volunteers in the next month and if all goes as planned with my thesis and I enjoy the rest of my time here, I would really like to help him out with this project.

After Ou Ning left we watched Still Life by Jia Zhang-Ke, which was a really typical Jia Zhang-Ke film. For those of you who haven't seen any Jia Zhang-Ke's films, they are slow, stately, and usually about common people in China. This one was a little odd in that there was a sort of supernatural element in it that never really got carried out. It was a bit of a tease, so to speak. Oh well.

After the film was over I went out to dinner with Lulu (who is from the University of Minnesota), Stephanie (from NYU), Scott, Jen, and Ellen (all from UW). Sam (from Oxford) walked around with us for a while, but left before we ate. We walked down an alley connected to the BFA, then through a really beautiful park and came out to a huge intersection. Lulu found us a good noodle restaurant, and we ate there. On our way back through the park we ran into this sort of group exercise--people of all ages got together and did some sort of calisthenics to techno music. It was awesome and I'd really like to film it soon, but I'd have to get up early in the morning for good light.

Once we got back to campus I walked to the dorm and grabbed my computer. I walked back to the internet cafe by myself and got a LOT of "looks" from the locals. I am blonde, short, and white. A lot of these people have never seen anyone like me before, and Chinese people are NOT afraid to stare. It's actually kind of refreshing because you can always tell when the people in America want to stare but are trying not to, you know? I don't mind people staring at me, it's pretty funny. I'm a little tipsy now (sry) and going to go surf the net and probably go home. The internet in my room is really awful so I won't be on it a whole lot.

That's all for now