Day 43 in Beijing

27th December 2009, Sunday, the first day mum's here with me in China.

We (Anson's mum, Anson and me) all thought mum would be pretty tired from the flight and didn't expect her to get up till lunch. But seriously, mum is just so excited and energetic, my god, she starting talking to me and trying to wake me up since like 8am. Eventually she abandoned me in the room and went out to talk to aunty for the whole morning. Anson and I are still pretty much dead asleep when they are already preparing breakfast. My god.

Breakfast was awesome! Exactly what I love! Milk and steam buns~! Wakaka, so good~! The steam buns are without any fillings, just a bun, and it was made by a company that's really famous in Beijing, a lot of families will line up for it (according to aunty's experience). Aunty knows that my mum loves buns so she went and got these for mum. So nice ~

Today aunty will take us to one of her favourite shopping centres and we'll have lunch there. The shopping centre is called Chengxiang, outside of the Gongzhufen subway station. It's one of the bigger ones in Beijing selling all sorts of products and you can spend the whole day there without getting bored. Aunty and mum picked a Sichuan style restaurant inside Chengxiang and it was so funny that Anson and I got really worried about our rice not coming again. Yesterday's experience really gave us a bad impact huh? How can rice be difficult to get in China? Must be because of our duck fight yesterday with the managers that made our rice order extremely hard >_<


After lunch it'll be my responsibility in taking mum around the shopping centres while aunty and Anson go visit Anson's granddad. I kept on telling mum all these little tips about living in Beijing but I bet she didn't even pay attention to me because she's so focused on shopping.I had to constantly remind her to watch out for cars, not to buy street food, and the most important thing, must bargain when she wants to buy something! I made a good example for mum I think =P We saw this pair of pants on sale for 180RMB and to be honest, it was already a fairly good price for NZ standard. However, I kept mum away from talking to the lady directly so she doesn't express interest, and then I demonstrated my bargaining skills. Eventually after some chit-chat, and walking away etc, we finally got the pair of pants for 120RMB. It's formal wear, black long pants for 120RMB, we all think it's really good =)

Eventually we went home with loads of shopping bag and food. Mum's favourite food was actually corns! I can't believe this. This is something she said she really miss about China, the Chinese corns. Why do I call it the Chinese corns? eeek, it's actually very different to the corns we have in NZ. I don't remember the Chinese corns at all, but I love the NZ ones, sweet and juicy, bright yellow corn, I love it. But the Chinese one is very light coloured with less moist but more starch texture, not sweet at all, but just very chewy. Mum really love this type of corn, she said it's more chewy, have more texture while eating it and won't get sick of the sweetness like the ones in NZ. Eek.

Day 42 in Beijing

The day after Christmas, the 26th December, what used to be one of my happiest days in the year (boxing day for presents, wakaka). Today is the 42nd day into my journey in Beijing.

My mum will arrive in Beijing tonigh at 11.30pm and she will stay here with me for nearly 3 weeks. Today one of my main goals is to move all my stuffs to Anson's house where my mum will be staying in the next few weeks. So lucky to have Anson and his mum here in Beijing, made everything for mum so much easier. My mum won't even come visit if it aunty wasn't here in Beijing, sigh, I'm not important enough, haha. Looking at my extremely puffy luggage I realised, crap, I think it may be overweight already, crap!!! Lucky mum is coming, haha, she can help me I'm sure =P

Chrissy came to Beijing a few days ago, to spend Christmas with her family here in Beijing and today we're going to meet up for lunch before she leaves tomorrow. Chrissy is such a bubbly girl, it makes me really really happy to just see her. I call today 'The Kiwi Day'. Just look at the people that came to lunch (from left): Josi, Kayne, Chrissy, Gerard, Jordan Chong, Karina, Jordan Wang, Anson and me. All kiwis!!! All from AIESEC New Zealand, spending a fantastic 'summer' here in China, and now all sitting together for traditional Beijing roast duck in Beijing!!! What a small world?!!!!

We took the guys to Hong Lian Roast Duck Restaurant, the restaurant Peter took us last time. Due to logistic reasons we arrived at the restaurant at 2.30pm. Lucky we called yesterday to ask about the opening hours and the manager told us the restaurant opens from morning till night and there's no need to reserve the roast ducks. When we finally sat down and making orders the waitress told us that all the ducks were sold out and the kitchen is closed. We asked if they can open the kitchen again (well, start up the oven again) and she said they can't. We asked to speak to the manager because we were told yesterday that there's no need to make bookings or reservations. The manager kept on saying that they chefs are on breaks and they can't do anything for us, but we also had to explain our situation to her: we are all from overseas and now we're taking our friends who travelled from different cities in China to try their Beijing roast duck, and it's really bad if they can't serve us any ducks. The manager came back after talking to the chefs and gave us one of the worst replies: all the ducks for lunch time are sold out and the chefs don't want to make our orders with the ducks for tonight. This reason made Anson and I really unhappy and Anson asked the manager why would they not sell TWO DUCKS to customers who are already SITTING inside their restaurant but rather keep it for later, when they don't even know if they will have customers? I think this really got her and she went to negotiate again. Jordan played the nice guy on the table and kept asking her try; Anson played the bad guy and also pressured her to try more; eventually she came back with the good news and said that the chefs will make our ducks now but it'll take 40 minutes for it to roast. YAY!!!! Ducks~!

We were all quite happy that we'll finally get the roast ducks then we realised our main guest, Chrissy (who came all the way from Shanghai) is vegetarian! LOL!!! It was really funny but at least we're getting something after our hard effort of negotiating. There's one dish that I highly recommend though: corn with salty egg yolks. It's SOOOOOOO GOOD!!! Everyone loves it and it's the first dish to be finished. mmmmm I'm so gonna come back again, not for the ducks but for the corns!!!

Another thing that really made us going crazy was with our rice! We ordered a big bowl of rice to share for everyone right at the beginning (when we were also making orders of meals)but the rice just won't come to us. We slowly got really impatient and kept asking for the rice. Every time a waitor/waitress that heard our request will run to the kitchen so we thought, yay, rice coming soon. But, nope, they just run into the kitchen but never comes out with the rice. Even if some waitors came out with rice it wasn't for us. Eventually we pretty finished the dishes and not everyone wants rice now, so we asked if we can just have two bowls of rice but PLEASE HAVE THEM NOW! The manager took the order and asked the waitress to quickly go get our rice, and then there's our wait again. I bet they're unhappy with our 'duck issue' before and that's why they're not giving us our rice. When we finally got the rice (after we finished our meal), the waitor brought us the big bowl of rice....then there it goes again, we had to explain again and again why we don't want this and we want 2 little bowls only. When our poor rice finally came, we all applaused and cheered, haha, we must be crazy for everyone else in this restaurant. The english-speaking + noisy + crazy table.

Looking at the satisfying faces on everyone's face (excluding Chrissy) when we finally got our ducks, we all knew it was worth it to come here today. Especially for Jordan Chong, Kayne and Karina, they have never tried Beijing roast ducks before. Jordan Chong even took one of the pastry with him and was sniffing it on the way when we left the restaurant, haha, he must've really liked the roast ducks.

We went to Xidan shopping centre after lunch, partly to see what's good to buy with the big Christmas discounts. There is really nothing much we can do in China apart from eating and shopping, (apart from all the tourist-y places that we don't know about, hehe). After walking a few hours around Xidan, we decided to find food again. LOL!!! What a day! Just walking and eating!!! We went into the Joycity Shopping Centre in Xidan and sat down at a place that specialises in rice noodles in Yunnan style.

Here goes my day, I can't believe I just spent one day walking and eating, haha, what a day! I guess walking around counts as exercise in some way right? OMG, I can't imagine what my scale will say when I get back to NZ...... It's more than common to leave China with an extra few kilos piled on the body, all thanks to the tasty and cheap food. hmmmmm I need to do something about this, to save my wallet and save myself from the heartbreaking weightgain.

Mum arrived tonight a little bit earlier than her scheduled time. Anson went with me to pick mum up, to give us a hand with the luggage, thanks Ans =) Mum was so excited and couldn't stop talking and telling us about her journey on the plane from Auckland to Tokyo then to Beijing. This it the first time mum left New Zealand after we left in 1997, and obviously the first time for her to come back to China since we left. She is DEFINITELY VERY EXCITED! I miss mum, I really do, and it's so cute to see her going on and on with her stories (which even made our taxi driver laugh, lol). One thing I remember about mum's flight to Beijing was when she was passing the boarders at Beijing airport, the guy checking her passport noticed that she haven't came back to China for a long time. Mum told the officer that she haven't been back for more than 12 years and the officer was so surprised! He read out my mum's name and said, 'I'll remember you, have fun!'. This was surprising for me too. I thought these officers won't even bother talk to people because they're just doing the repetitive work everyday and won't have the desire to talk. Such a nice officer =)

Welcome home mum =)

Day 41 in Beijing

Hohoho, Merry Christmas~!!!

25th December 2009, my 41st day in China, my first Christmas in China! Today we have a full day plan and it's gonna be fun!!! Gerard and I will be up early in the morning to go to Carre Four for some Christmas shopping. Jordan also got up real early to make us Christmas breakfast. He said it'll be a surprise for us and we will definitely like it. Hoho. By the time Gerard and I came back from Carre Four it's near 11am and to our surprise, the table is full of food! Jordan made french toast for us~! I miss the kiwi breakfast!! Everyone of us have a bowl of fresh fruits as well, and guess what? Look closely at the photo, there's kiwi fruit!!! Haha, thanks Jordan! It really makes us happy to see something that reminds us of home. Kiwi fruits are so expensive in China, it's like 8RMB for one or something. Man..... kiwi fruits will be so cheap now in NZ, especially in the summer time. After breakfast, Jordan and Josi were washing the dishes, Gerard is preparing for his gifts to his students, and I'm busy packing. I'm moving out tomorrow >_<

What's more exciting than opening up presents on a Christmas day?! We sat down around the coffee table and started giving each other presents. I gave my Christmas presents to each one of them few days ago whenever I bought it. I don't want to leave it till Christmas day just in case if they bought the same thing for themselves. For Gerard, I bought a pocket-size book for him to learn practical and easy Chinese; for Josi, I gave her a pair of pink ear muffs so she can stay warm and look bright (I think she didn't really like the bright pink, hehe, it's too happy for her); for Jordan, I picked a black and white scarf and force him to wear it too (Jordan don't like scarfs, but it's too cold in Beijing to not wear a scarf).

Josi started sharing her presents too us too: she bought a long grey scarf for Gerard because his one was too short, it looks really good on Gerard; she gave Jordan a pair of gloves, again he don't like wearing gloves (and also because his own gloves was too feminine, haha, I think this is the real reason); and thanks Josi for buying me the red scarf!! I really really like it! Thank you thank you~! Now I really look like I'm in Christmas, haha, so red.

Jordan gave us the presents too: he bought Gerard a pack of Mentholatum facial products (facial wash and moisturiser); gave me a cup (for work) and a spoon to add to my collection; and lastly to Josi a pair of warm slippers because the ones she's wearing in the flat was too big for her. We all bought stuff for each other based on what we will need, this is really good! Things that can be used are much more practical and won't become a waste~! Thanks guys!!

We tried to watch our Christmas movie today, it's called Four Christmas. It's a 2009 movie by Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn, a love comedy about a couple who have to visit all four parents during Christmas time and how the things change between the couple with the influence under the four different families. It seems to be quite an interesting movie but our stupid TV is so quiet whenever we played movies through our laptop!! Josi and I couldn't really hear what they're saying and only Jordan still knows what was going on, why? Not because Josi and I have bad hearings but because Jordan had already seen this movie before, hehe, 'cheating'. We eventually decided to not watch the movie during the day and will try again at the night, it's more quiet, hopefully it'll be a bit better.

At about 3.30pm we started packing and start to make the trip to Changping. We need to go to Sun Village for the special Christmas party the school is holding for their students. When we finally arrived at the party venue (which is another site of the school) we were so shocked by the amount of children attending this party. Originally Gerard expected just few of the classes to be here but in fact, this room was packed by students and their parents. Frank (the owner of Sun Village) welcomed us and showed us the special seats they reserved for us (right at the front facing the crowd of students) and told us that they didn't expect that many students either.

Tonight's party is like a gala show. There's a long list of shows where some studetns and some teachers will be performing in. Some of the performance tonight include hip hop and ballroom dancing, singing, taekwondo performance, magic tricks, quizzes and etc. We were first up in the list and we started off by giving a little introduction of ourselves. Gerard is the main host and I was at the side translating for him. A lot of the students and parents who have never seen Gerard before were obviously realy curious and won't stop looking at us. Then we got together and sang some Christmas songs for the crowd and asked the kids to follow us too. There were just way too many kids in this room and the noise level is insane. Luckily we used microphones and speakers, but yet, it's still not quite enough to talk over the noises.

When we told the students that we'll play games with them and whoever that answers our questions correctly will receive a gift from NZ. OMG, this stirred up even more noises and 'competition' between the kids. LOL! It took us a while to finally get the game going, and it was really just we ask a question (in english) related to Christmas or New Zealand, and the student must answer correctly in English. Some answers were really funny, e.g. Gerard asked 'what is the name of the old man in Christmas time', and some students answered 'Snow man' or 'Old man'.

Unfortunately we couldn't stay until the end of the party because we made a special dinner booking at Max Brenner. That's right, Max Brenner! It's the chocolate boutique shop Josi saw around PKU and we decided to make our Christmas dinner a special one. Chocolate fondue for Christmas, hoho, sounds sooooo good. After a long journey back into Beijing city, we finally arrived at Max Brenner just before it closes. We flipped through the menu and we decided to only have chocolate fondue with bananas and mashmellows to fill our cravings. It was a little dissappointing to see how little the chocolate fondue was but you know what? Anything to do with chocolate is enough for me. mmmmmmmmmm anything that's chocolate can make me melt in joy, mmmmm cold winter Christmas night, close friends, chocolate fondue, there's nothing more I want for tonight~ mmmm ^_^

We walked out from Max Brenner after chocolate fondue and was very much still hungry for more food (LOL). Most restaurants around the area are closed, Christmas isn't really a special day for Chinese shops to open late for. But guess what we saw outside the gate of PKU?! The little carts selling street food, like BBQ skewers and skewers of spicy food which you can pick and choose from. This is it, this is our Christmas dinner, hehe. Each skewer was only 50 cents and the noodles is 1RMB. Even Josi and Gerard joined us for the food. Tonight was sooooo cold and we are standing on the street eating food in the cold, haha what an experience. The spicyness really helped us against the cold but our fingers are so red and frozen after the meal. I love these spicy skewers~ Cheap and tasty, haha, but I bet it's not too healthy and clean. Oh well, a little treat every now and then is not too bad right?!

Home sweet home, finally after a long ride we're back home. We thought about the cake Karen sent us. Oh yeah, haven't wrote about it yet. Few days ago, Gerard received a call from the delivery company confirming our address, he directed the call to Jordan. Ever since then we've been guessing what the delivery could be. Until eventually we found out it was Karen (AIESECer from Auckland) who ordered a cake online and will be delivered to us. So nice~~! Thank you Karen~! We got home, fooled around and started sharing the cake. The cake is yellow with a 'happy birthday' sign and 2 little santa claus figures as decorations. Jordan thinks the santa claus looks like that octupus guy in Priates of the Carribean. The cake is a very typical Chinese style cake with the Chinese style cream. Only Josi liked it because she think the cream in NZ is too sweet for her. The rest of us thinks the cream here in China is very plastic and fake taste. What we found that's really funny about the cake is that the decoration on top of cream was tomatoes!! Yep, that's right, tomatoes!!! It was so fun laughing about our cake, thanks Karen for the sweet gift!!!

The night ended with Jordan going crazy while eating the santa claus man (refer to photo) and us finishing our movie, The Pursuit of Happiness, together.

Merry Christmas =)

Day 40 in Beijing

Waaaaaaa, 40th day!!!! Wooooo~~~!!!!! Christmas Eve, the 24th December 2009, stepping into the 40th day of my journey in Beijing 2009/2010. Woohoo~!

Today I made a special trip to Changping 昌平 with Gerard. Gerard's workplace is in Changping, in a school called Sun Village. He needs some help with translation at work and to prepare for the Christmas Party Sun Village, so I took the day off and went with him. Gerard always asked all of us to go to Changping one day for a visit. From what he described, Changping is very rural and really not fun at all. It's a place that he wouldn't go unless required, lol, we always make jokes around this topic.

Changping is located at the 30kms north west of Beijing and is at the south side of the Great Wall. This is a city with very long history and very protected for its resources endownments and ancient history. If anyone wants to go to Badaling part of the Great Wall, you will definitely pass Changping, and therefore it's also a town for tourism.

We took the the subway to Jishuitan and caught the express bus 919 to Changping. The total journey lasted about 1 and a half hour. Poor Gerard >_<>

We were going to go to the Christmas Party held by the AIESEC MC team in their flat. But eventually due to logistic reasons we decided not to attend. It's pity that we couldn't attend but we made sure us four still stay together for the festival. Gerard and I met up with Josi then eventually meeting Jordan at The Palace. The Palace is a high class shopping centre in Chaoyang and is famous for the massive screen up in the air. We were hoping to see the undersea animals showing up in the screen, but it's Christmas, of course there will be Christmas related things instead. It's such a cold night tonight, but there are still a lot of people around in town, especially young people. It's just too cold though, for us to stay out for long so let's just go home for a warmer night =P

(LOL at Gerard and Jordan trying to pose like penguins!! hehe)

Christmas Eve, us four spent the night together, as close friends, flatmates and most importantly, as a family. Gerard bought a little Christmas tree just a few days ago as a surprise, and you know what? It really makes a difference in our flat. Christmas is rather commercialised and really designed to attract young couples who wants to celebrate together. The little Christmas tree shines in our flat, glowing with mini red lightbulbs, warm and fluffy~ I love Christmas~!

Day 39 in Beijing

The 23rd of December 2009 = the 39th day into my Beijing journey.

This must be a movies week for me; tonight is another movie night. Bodyguards and Assassins, the most recent martial arts movie by a HK director Desen Chan, famous producer Peter Chan and loads of big actors and actresses. A movie must be seen, and it must be from the movie cinema, wakaka. There's a cinema in the APN shopping centre in Wangfujin. It's only 30RMB per ticket, it is a domestic film so it's relatively cheaper than other international blockbuster movies.

Bodyguards and Assassins is a movie about an assassination in Hong Kong on the 15th October 1906. On this day, a group of bodyguards made up of revolutioners, businessmen, begger, cart driver, student, gambler, circus owner etc, were trying to protect Sun Zhong Shan (孙中山). The businessman hosting Sun Zhongshan (who's coming to HK for a planning meeting for the upcoming revolution against the Qing Dynasty of China) found out that the Qing officials has sent a group of assassins to kill Sun and therefore the businessman gathered a group of individuals and combined their unique skills to protect Sun in Hong Kong.

The characters in this movie are mostly made up for the storyline but everyone one of them have a very interesting and unique background. Each individual have their own reasonings behind why they agreed to join this dangerous plan.

Firstly there's Shaobai Chen 陈少白(actor, 梁家辉Tony Leung). He's the planner and initiator of Sun's visit to Hong Kong, a revolutionist. He is willing to sacrifice everything for the upcoming revolution because the only way out to make a better life for everyone in China is to take down the emperor and his dictatorship, and to do so there must be a revolution. He always borrown money from Yutang Li (a businessman) as the funds for the revolution and is also the teachr of Li's son, Chongguang Li. I learned from this character how one can suffer from guilt and the lack of ability to choose even from doing something he believes in, when he had choose between protecting his student/close friend's only son, or letting this young revolutionist contribute to the plan. This is one of the two only remaining bodyguards left behind at the end of the day, it leaves a trail of thoughts for me.

Then there's Yutang Li 李玉堂(actor Xuexi Wang王学圻), the financial backbone of for the revolution taking place in Hong Kong. He's the owner of a large business Hong Kong, very well known and every businessman or politicians in Hong Kong all gives very high respect. Li supports Chen's plans and actions for many years with an intial intention of keeping Hong Kong peaceful so he can grow his business. When he realised that his only son was taking part in the revolution he tried every effort to keep his son away from the 'danger'. But with Chen being kidnapped by the Qing assassins and the instabilities within Hong Kong, he was slowly dragged into the whirl pool mess of the plan and eventually became the leader of the bodyguards group. From Li, I saw the pride of being someone who believes in the country and belives in a brighter future. No matter how he tried to stay away from dangers, when he realised that he can in fact make a difference he took the lead undoubtedly and bravely, stay calm and did everything to make the plan happen. This pride of leading the group, giving them the mental support and guidance, staying calm in all kind of situations and the fatherhood love he gives to his son are what attracts me to this charater the most.

Chongyang Shen 沈重阳 (actor Donnie Yen甄子丹), is one of the best fighters in this movie. He's also addicted to gambling and often lose all this earnings. He was paid to keep an eye on Chen and Li and report everything to the assassins. From what he found out about the plan, he indirectly led the assassins to the circus and the circus owner Fang Tian (one of the bodyguards) was killed. The night before the 15th October he went to visit his ex-wife (Yue Ru) who is now one of Li's wives. Yue Ru found out about the plan and realised that Li will need as much help as he needs to even stay alive at the end of the day, so she told Shen that the her and Li's daughter was actually Shen's daughter. She asks of Shen to keep Li alive because Li is the reason why his daughter was still alive and living a happy life now. Shen changed from that night and went out of his way secretly protecting Li and his bodyguards ont he 15th October. This is one of the saddest stories in this movie for me. Shen sacrificed his life going against the most dangerous assassin because he believes that only if he can end all these, then his daughter will still have a 'father' to take care of her. Donnie Yen is one of the best martial artists in Asia and his fighting scenes deserves the most applause in this movie. There was a 10 minutes long fighting scene between Shen and one of the assasssins (Kung, the world champion fighter). To be honest, before this movie, I wasn't a fan of Donnie Yen at all, but from this movie I am really amazed at his martial arts and his acting skills. He made his character the most important and heart breaking for all audiences.

Another fighter in the bodyguards was the begger, Yubai Liu刘郁白 (actor Leon Lai黎明). He was a rich and handsome young man with unique martial art skills inherited from his family (using a super heavy metal made fan as his weapon), but he fell in love with his father's woman (actress Michelle Lee李嘉欣) and ended up witnessing the death of his father and his lover. He was struck really hard by their deaths and became a drug addict and eventually a begger. He joined the bodyguard gang because of the support Li (the businessman) has been giving him since before the collapse of his family and now he's paying back his loyalty to Li. All the audiences in the cinema was really surprised to find out that the scruffy looking begger was Leon Lai (one of the most famous artist from Hong Kong). Thank god his appearance was changed later in the movie and was showing a very artistic martial art performance (Leon does not know kong fu).

Nicolas Tse 谢霆锋 was Li's cart-driver, A-Si阿四. A-si is a very pure and extremely loyal character. He's at a similar age as Li's son (let's call him Li Junior for now, lol) and are very close to Li's family. For A-Si, the most important thing in his life is the safety of his masters, Li and Li Junior. He dreams of marrying this girl from a photoshop in town and asked if his master, Li, is willing to introduce them. A-Si is the most naive character in this movie, he do everything for and only for his loyalty to his masters, and dreamed of having an happily ever after life with his girl. But loyalty brought him death, and he was killed by the leading assassin (who also killed Liu the begger, and Shen the martial artist, and pretty much every other important character in this movie). I was so touched by the scene when he got really beaten by the assassin but still presistenly holding onto the assassin's leg to make it harder for the assassin to follow his young master. Not my favourite scene.

Li Chongguang李重光 (actor Bojie Wang王柏杰) well I call him Li Junior, is the only son of Li (the businessman) and the young master of A-Si. He's the yongest character in the bodyguard group, aged 17 years old. He's deeply influenced by his teacher, Chen (the planner), although he's still childish and naive at times but possess a very determined heart towards revolution. This often leads to the big debates and fights between him and his father. One person must be chosen to play the role of Sun during the day while Sun is actually hiding in basement for the meeting. Li Junior's name was being drawn out from the pot. His father didn't realise it was his son that was cover and was in deep shock to realise it was too late to pull him to safety. Li Junior was eventually stabbed to death by the leading assassin (who still believes it was Sun himself inside the cart). A character of determination and strong beliefs, although he's young but he knows he can make an impact. Very interesting character.

All the bodyguards in this movie who knows how to fight (martial arts) were male except for Fang Hong 方红 (actress: Li Yuchun李宇春). She's the daughter of the Fang Tian, the circus owner. Fang Hong is very fast and flexible in her martial arts, her personality is very strong and stubborn but secretly dreamed of a peaceful and stable life. The sudden death of her father left her with nothing but shock and anger, and therefore she joined the bodyguards group to revenge for her father. On the 15th October, while she was chasing after and fighting the assassin who killed her father, she accidentally found the trap set by the assassins where they plan to set a bomb to kill all the bodyguards. The limited time and ability left her with no choice but to sacrifice herself and set off the bomb to kill the assassin, including herself. What's most interesting about this character wasn't about the character Fang Hong, but about the actress Li Yuchun. She's the most famous singing competition idol winner in Chinese history. Her appearance is rather non-feminine and was definitely a new stream of fashion for young Chinese. I always wondered why on earth would she become the Chinese idol winner that year and why is she still famous now. She's not a great singer, not a great dancer (although she believe she is) and also not a great actress. In this movie, her character is to be honest, made for her, the character and the story behind the character were made for Li Yuchun. Li Yuchun's commercial value is undenyable, she was voted to be the idol winner and this is the first sign of democratic in China. This was published by the Times magazine (Asia version) and she was the cover person. Can you believe this? I still couldn't agree to why she's one of the top leading artist in China now but I cannot neglect to the Li Yuchun effect in China.

Another most-talked-about actress in China now is actress Bingbing Fan范冰冰, acting as Yueru月茹, the fourth wife of Li (the businessman). She was the wife of Shen (the martial artist) and left him once she found out she's pregnant with Shen's child. She realised that this martial artist and gambler will not be able to give her child a happy and stable life, and therefore left him and married to the businessman as his fourth wife. Fan Bingbing was only acting in supporting roles for many years until recently people started to realise how different she is now. She's very hardworking, very very hardworking, just look at the amount of productions she had this year. She opened up her own production company and became a producer herself for her own movies. She is very beautiful, maybe, one of the most beautiful actress now in China (for many people) and she never fails to stir up massive discussions and debates in the entertainment industry (from her appearance, to her company, to her productions, to her rumours, to her fashion sense etc). I actually like her a lot, her acting skills are quite good and she's open to act anything. I really like her performance in Zhang Ziyi's new film where Fan was the mean and nasty girl in the movie.

In the society now there's never a strict rule in the entertainment industry that only actress and actors can be in movies, or only singers can sing, or whatever. Now anyone can be an actor as long as you fit what the producer and director wants, or as long as you can bring some value to the production, or if you have any commercial value. Just like Mengke Bateer巴特尔, a very famous Chinese basketball player, took over the role as the tofu seller in the movie, Fuming Wang王复明. This role was definitely created for Bateer and Bateer only. In the movie, he's a monk that left Shaolin and became a tofu seller on the streets in Hong Kong. He looks very scary because of his size but he's in fact a very kind and naive person. His favourite hobby is gardening, haha, so cute. Li (the businessman) invited him to join the team and he agreed because of his loyalty to the country. In the movie, he wasn't a good kongfu fighter but definitely made a huge impact in defending and protecting his team mates with his size. There are several interesting shots in the movie where he was throwing cabbage like a professional basketball player at the assassins, haha!!!! In the movie, everyone calls him 'tofu' because he never shared his past with anyone. Eventually he used his full strength to fight against the hundreds of assassins and was killed. Before his last breath, he said to A-Si, "my name is Wang Fuming". I really like his character, not only that it is interesting how the producer incorporated Bateer's professional basketball skills into the movie and used it as his strength, but also because how kind and warm he was. After doing a little research on him, I found out that he's a mongolian, he was already 1.88m tall at the age of 8 and joined the Mongolia Basketball team at the age of 12 (2.1m tall). Through many years of practise and experience, he became the first Chinese NBA winner in 2003. Woot!!!!

Now finally comes the bad guy. There were 10 bodyguards against 500 assassins, but only the leader of the assassins were really the main character and the strongest fighter in the movie. The leader of the assassins, Xiaoguo Yan 阎孝国was by actor Jun Hu胡军, one of the top actors from Mainland China. Yan used to be the best student of Chen and was being raised up under the western education system. He became very much against westerners because of what they did to China and joined the Qing Dynasty troops. He believes that the revoulion led by Sun will never succeed and when he found out that Sun is coming to Hong Kong, he took on the role and led the assassins to kill Sun. Hu Jun is not a martial artist but he was trained for a long time for this movie and his role. He's definitely one of my favourite actors now, his professionalism and performance were amazing. No matter how bad and scary he was in killing so many bodyguards, but if we think from another point of view, he's really just doing his job and sacrificing himself for his loyalty to what he believes in. His only aim was to kill Sun, which he believed that Sun is inside the cart (by that was Li Junior inside the cart as a cover). Yan followed the cart and killed everyone that came into his way, after stabbing the person in the cart to death, he got shot from the back by Chen, his own teacher. He turned around and said nothing but 'I've completed what I must do'. A lot of audiences hate this role because he's the 'bad guy' and killed a lot of the 'good guys', but I like this character, for his passion and his loyalty.

After watching this movie, I was very moved by the passion of the revolutionists and the assassins. It's very easy now for people to loose faith in what you believe in and not standing strong. This film isn't based on a real story but definitely coincides with a lot of similar stories in history. A dream can bring strong and capable individuals together, no matter how much one person can contribute, the collection of all sacrifices is the essence of becoming successful.

Bodyguards and Assassins, a movie among my favourites, a movie I strongly recommend, a movie I will watch over and over again. Bravo!

　

Day 38 in Beijing

The 38th day into my journey in China. Today is the 22nd of December 2009.

I took the day off to sort out some logistic and accommodation issues. It's been so long since I stayed home during a weekday. It feels so different!!! I feel so lucky that we have a really nice flat that feels like home for all of us. I think if we didn't get such a nice place to stay in our journey wouldn't be as successful and easy as now. The feeling of having a home that 'belongs to us' in a new environment is so crucial and it surely killed a lot of stress we would've got otherwise. Hearing about the accommodation issues with other interns and international students, I really feel that we made the best decision in going ahead with this flat. Our landlord lady is definitely really helpful for us too. I love our Beijing home.

The four of us are really getting to know each other and getting used to have each other under the same roof. We all have very different habits and it's really interesting how we have to get used to each other and make the best out of our 3.5 months. Josi is still sleeping really late as usual. Even though she have to get up every morning by 8am at the latest for work, she still sleeps really really late! Sometimes I worry for her and remind her to go to bed, but then I realised this is her way of life and this is what makes her happy (not the staying up late part, but the catching-up with friends online part). Gerard also sleeps really late, watching Survivor online, and all sorts of TV shows. He knows pretty much everything about what's showing on TV and everything about movies. I really enjoy the time with my flatmates. My first experience flatting and sharing the same house with people outside of my family. This is really interesting and new for me and I'm sure it's the same for everyone else.

After making a massive meal for dinner, I decided to watch a movie at the night and Jordan joined me. Gerard somewhat watched the movie with us too when he came home later tonight. This movie is called 'Shinjuku Incident 新宿事件'. This is a movie directed by Er Dongsheng 尔冬升, leading actor is Jackie Chan and Jinglei Xu as the leading actress. The shooting began in November 2007 and was on screen in April 2009. The interesting thing is that this movie is not one of those typical Jackie Chan movie, there's no kong fu at all, but more of a story telling and artistic movie. Unlike his other kong fu movies, Jackie Chan actually 'died' in this movie! The charater that he's playing is not someone that have super power and never-dying body, hehe, that's quite new for Jackie Chan isn't it?

This movie talks about Jinglei Xu (acting as Jackie Chan's girlfriend) went missing after going to Japan as an international student. After many years, Jackie Chan came to Tokyo (illegally) to find her and eventually found out that she has already married to a gang leader in Japan. At the same time, Jackie Chan met another woman, played by actress Bingbing Fan, as the mama-san for a bar. Through the friends Jackie Chan made in Japan and became involved in the fights and incidents between gangs in Tokyo. Eventually Jackie Chan was leading the local Chinese citizens and gangs and fight against the Japanese gang.

The movie left a lot of thoughts with me. This movie is mostly about the tough times people have to go through when you just arrived in a new and foreign country. Although in this movie, Jackie Chan initially was staying in Japan illegally (without visas and passport), but the type and amount of work he must do everyday to just get a bare enough living cost was really shocking.

Sometimes we are forced to do certain things just to stay alive and sometimes we are just forced by external environments. Eventually when Jackie Chan successfully obtained a passport and PR in Japan, he immediately dropped out from everything that he was doing and left with his pride. This the beauty of human, pride. He started to have a really good life, but how long can he have that for?

Another beauty of the human race, friendship and relationship, these two are often the reasons behind a lot of our actions. He eventually went back to his old group of friends thinking he may have a little influence and bring them back onto the right track. This is really touching. He's really going out of his way, letting go what he already achieved, and going back to the past to try and save his friends. Then comes the dirty side of human, how much does friendship weigh? Is it really that precious? Maybe yes for some people, but for others, it can be an obstacle and rubbish.

That led to the end of the movie, everyone died, the good guy and the bad guys. What's left behind? I was left behind, sitting on the couch, thinking about this story, about how little and how weak humans are. An interesting movie leaves behind a trail of thoughts and imagination. What if? What if I'm in the position of Jackie Chan?

Day 37 in Beijing

The 21st of December, the 37th day of my journey.

Today is the special TN dinner day that I mentioned earlier. We planned for this day for quite a few months, well, to be more exact, we 'talked' about this TN dinner for quite sometime and finally we settled down to tonight. Isa won't be joining us tonight so we'll only have Gilbert and Cassie here. They're both AIESECers from PKU and are very close with Gerard and Josi.

Initially we planned to make one dish each and the theme of our dinner is 'kiwi style'. Yep, we want to give our friends a kiwi-style dinner. But due to logistic reasons and that Josi's responsible for taking Gilber and Cassie home after work, only Gerard, Jordan and myself will be cooking tonight. I went to the supermarket at Raffles City with Jordan early last week looking for ingredients for our menu. We bought pasta and Italian pasta sauce, this will be our main for the night. Josi wants to make hash browns so Jordan and I took over the responsibility of making this dish. I will also be making kuamra fries for everyone. Our last dish on the menu is sausage rolls.

Our biggest challenge for the TN dinner was the lack of ingredients and materials that we need. We couldn't find sausages in the supermarket but only Chinese style sausages (like salami) or frankfurters. We don't have a frying pan at home but only two Chinese style woks and it's impossible to make hash browns in this triangular shaped pan. Gerard was responsible in making the pasta sauce and it turned out to be quite successful. But the hash brown is just so scary, it turned really black and somewhat still uncooked with a lot of oil and look nothing like a hash brown but a mixture of burtn potato slices. We ordered for some slices of bread to be delivered to our flat from the convenience store and guess what? We received a delivery of a pack of red bean bread, LOL!!! This is just so not kiwi style at all !! We asked for another delivery and this time it was spring onion bread, imagine sausage roll with spring onion or read bean bread.... eeeek!

Tonight's 'kiwi style dinner' was a complete fail. I wish I took more photos of the actual food we made, we would so made it on failblog.com, LOL! We even forgot to buy forks and knives and ended up eating 'kiwi-style dinner' with chopsticks! Haha, pasta with chopsticks!!!

We all felt pretty bad and sorry for Gilbert and Cassie, who have to continue to smile and force themselves to eat and swallow our food. No matter how many times we explain that this is NOT normal kiwi style food, I sitll have a feeling that we made a pretty bad start for Gilbert and Cassie on NZ food. Sorry >_<