China

Life and travel stories from China – culture, contrast, family ties, and a filmmaker’s eye on a changing world.

89 posts

Golden week, so far: Ningbo, a lake, tea mountain and faked cities.

<figure class="post__image"><img loading="lazy" src="https://montras.io/media/posts/253/hengdian_fake_beijing_palace_by_yakobusan_d13l0as-fullview.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="600"></figure><a href="http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/66485188/">Hengdian Fake Beijing Palace</a> by =<a class="u" href="http://yakobusan.deviantart.com/">yakobusan</a> on <a href="http://www.deviantart.com">deviant</a><a href="http://www.deviantart.com">ART</a><br><br>This pictures was <strong>not</strong> taken in Beijing.<br><br>Confusing headline? You should have seen me when I was standing in the fake forbidden palace! <em>Hengdian World Studios</em> is the name of the crazy movie studio that 'rebuild' the forbidden city for cinematic purposes. And not only Beijing, but they also copied some buildings from Xi'An, Hongkong, Guangzhou and other cities. I didn't know this, but quite a few big movie titles were completely or partly shot here: Gong Li's THE EMPEROR AND THE ASSASSIN, Zhen Kaige's horrible THE PROMISE and last but not least Zhang Yimou's latest drama THE CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. And countless chinese TV series, as it seems.</p>

My first driving lesson in China!

Last sunday was the 'premiere': I had my very first driving lesson in Shanghai's Xuhui district, near Caobao road line one subway station. The license costs me about 4000 kuai and it will take 'at least' 3 months to get it, as the teacher said.

Buying a Nintendo Wii in Shanghai.

I wanted a Xbox 360. But then I saw that the prices for HDTV's didn't drop that much and that we probably weren't going to buy one anytime soon. No HDTV, no Xbox 360 necessary. I don't wanna play Halo 3 on a 21 inch&hellip;

Insane rain in Pudong!

I just had left my home to walk to Longyang road to grab a subway to go downtown for lunch with a friend, when a insane rainstorm started. In the last days it had rained here every once in a while, mostly for about 5&hellip;

Old Shanghai in Ang Lee's new movie.

Lust, Caution is the new movie from Ang Lee. Most of the story seems to take place in 'occupied Shanghai', so I am guessing in the late 1930's? The story is about a 'ordinary' girl who has to make a dude fall in love with&hellip;

Top 25 Cities with skyscrapers.

<p>German magazine "Spiegel" has <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,495801,00.html">published a list of 25 cities</a> - ordered by the amount of skyscraper they have. It's a quite interesting list and it even has some surprises. Shanghai will, of course, sooner or later rise to No. 1 - don't worry! Here we go:<br><br>No. 1: <strong>Hongkong, China</strong>! 7422 skyscrapers.<br><br>No. 2: <strong>New York City, USA</strong>! 5445 skyscrapers.<br><br>No. 3: <strong>Singapore</strong>! 3503 skyscrapers. 4 million people.</p>

Whenever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm.

Warning! The following post is rather... 'rough' and makes multiple use of the s-word. And the d-word. Now you'll probably want to read it even more, huh? So this whole mess started almost a month ago, but I didn't want to write about it before&hellip;

SIFF: I just don't want anymore.

I went to the Shanghai Film Art Center on friday for accreditation, like I posted earlier. On saturday the horror started: I went first to the press conference in Pudong, where I managed to take some pictures of Michelle Rodriguez ('LOST') and Nathan Fillion ('FIREFLY',&hellip;

Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF): Day 1.

In the picture above you see that I eventually got a press card for the SIFF, the 10th Shanghai International Film Festival. But what a hussle! When I went to the Festival de Cannes two years ago, they asked me for a bunch of stuff&hellip;

Saturday: Moving to Pudong.

Yes, my life is in little boxes at the moment. We're moving to our new apartment on saturday, and we managed to finish packing two days in advance. Thank god I have that german will to be best prepared. For a time I even wanted&hellip;