We woke up pretty early to go to Songzuahong, an artist's village on the outskirts of Beijing. The ride there was not long at all, and I read a bit and talked to Sam. Sam is a student from Oxford and he had been living in Beijing last year for his year abroad. He had some interesting insights into Chinese street culture and it was nice talking to him.
Once we got to the village we relaxed a bit and then saw Fang Liu's Last Train Home. It was by far the better film that we saw that day. Last Train Home was a documentary on migrant workers in Guangzhou. It was an incredibly touching and sad story of a family torn apart when the parents leave their Sichuan home to go work so they can provide for their three children. After the film was over we had a Q&A with the director who had some wonderful insights into making documentary films. This was probably also my favorite Q&A because the director certainly knew his subject and was very interesting.
I'll be honest here and say that I fell asleep for most of the second film. It was hot in the theater and I couldn't help it. What I saw of the film I didn't like though, and that seemed to be the general consensus.
The director of the second film told us the name of a good Mongolian food place in Songzuahong and "led" us there. We got lost a few times. The food was decent but the main dish was lamb so I didn't really partake in a lot of food.
Di, Shelley, and I made our way to Sanlitun bar district. At the second bar we went to we met an international rugby team who were staying in Beijing for a bit. They were all really nice... and very cute. Someone spilled their drink on Di's shirt, so we decided to call it a night.
Today is probably going to be pretty mellow, I'm going to go to a mall and pick up some clothes and attempt to drop off laundry somewhere. The laundry machines in our dorms don't work, so I need to take clothes I want washed to a dry cleaners. Then I'm going to come back and get some work done... I hope.
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