Water towns of the East

All along the coast by Shanghai are small villages on the water. Canals run through them and fishing and tourism are the main activities.

We visited Zhou Zhuang.

And took the boat tour while our gondolier serenaded us...

Did some shoppingAnd visited the local temple
I think the fabric strips in the trees represent prayers...

Beautiful, no?

Beijing Load in

It started with a pre-rig at 9PM on Tuesday. The trucks arrived at 1AM on Wednesday morning and 4 crew members dumped them and loosely organized the contents in the theatre space, getting home at 4AM.

8:30AM Wednesday morning was our crew call for our official load in day, even though clearly some of the crew had already put in an 8 hour day...

Most people went home at 10PM on Wednesday night and were called at 8AM on Thursday morning. The plan was to finish load in on Thursday morning, have a tech rehearsal in the afternoon and have an invited press dress reheasal that night.

The Beijing Exhibition Hall theatre space is fine, not nearly as big as the Shanghai Grand, but nothing really is. That's the biggest theatre I've ever seen.

And the dressing rooms are really nice.

Unfortunately, all they have in the building is squat toilets. But that's a minor issue.

The main problem is electricity... There's never enough of it. Everything gets turned off at night to conserve energy and true to all bureaucratic form, there's one guy in all of Beijing who knows how to turn the electricity on and he's gone home, or to lunch or is on vacation. So the beginning of load in we wait for hours to get that problem resolved or try to work in the hot darkness.

And then once it's on, we begin the massive process of running electrical cords throughout the entire building to power all of our American electronics that have the wrong plugs for Asian outlets...

This is where Wigs and Wardrobe get held up the most. We can't work without light, irons, sewing machines, hair dryers etc. so we wait the longest.

Wigs spent their waiting time creating and decorating their "Hair Saloon"...

The Louann wig and her tiny troll double...

While we in Wardrobe waited for washing machines and dryers to get hooked up.

The machines were rented and teeny tiny and had to be delivered and then hooked up

in the men's bathroom...

This process took all day wednesday so we came in on thursday and still had 8 full sized loads of laundry to do. These are half sized machines and that dryer in the middle, the one you can hardly see, belongs in a doll house.

Plus they weren't hooked until mid morning thursday and then we had trouble with a washer getting water. So once all that was resolved, we had this problem...

I asked my translator to help me start it and she looked at the machine sort of blankly and then shrugged and punched some buttons and it turned on.

3 hours later the machine was still cycling on the first load of wash.

And after it finally quit it turned out that the water was blazing hot and one of the shirts had bled all over the rest of them... So everything was pinkish and several shirts were unwearable...

sigh.

I was on the verge of saying something like "HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT CYCLE TO PUT THE WASH ON WHEN IT'S IN CHINESE! THAT'S WHY I ASKED SOMEONE CHINESE TO HELP ME!"

And then I remembered two things:

A. I'm in China. It's My responsibility to figure it out, not theirs to make everything readable to me...

and B. Just because you can speak and read a language doesn't mean you know how to work a washing machine. I always have crew members asking me to help them with washing machines that are labeled in English...

Anyway, a VERY long and soggy story short (er), we did the wash

in

the

sink

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In a Men's Bathroom Sink!!!!!

By hand!!!

If I'd had some rocks and a river, those shirts might have gotten clean. As it was they were

clean...er.

and very wet. So took our dressers into the shower of the men's bathroom and put them in teams wringing everything out... And then faced the problem of getting everything dry.

The one dryer fit about 4 towels at full capacity and the baby dryer didn't work at all.

So we trekked out to the department store to buy fans. I can't even think about that situation without laughing.

All we wanted were fans. it seemed so simple. And we found them! Then we tried to pick one up and take it to the counter. But it doesn't work that way in China, apparently. So we went back and forth with the sales reps in two languages, trying to do charades of picking up the fan and taking it away, and them them taking it away from us, putting it down, pointing to the price tag and making "you can't do that" motions.

FINALLY we realized that they have this stack of price tags on each item. You have to take as many price tags off as you want (1 tag for one fan, 2 tags for 2 fans...) and give them the tags.

I have no idea what should happen after that. Here's what actually happened.

We couldn't have fans that only had one tag. Apparently that's the floor model and it's not available... It took forever for us to understand that since we kept pointing to fans and they kept shaking their heads.

What seems like hours later, we finally had 4 fan tags that they would let us have. And they wrote down some stuff and handed us a different sheet. Now we had a piece of paper, no fans and no idea what to do next. Eventually, after more charades we realized we had to pay first and hopefully get the fans later.

So we paid and got a different set of papers. But now all the people we had been dealing with had vanished and we still had no fans! So we're wandering around with the paper trying to figure out what to do next and wanting to just go pick the fans up off the shelf and walk away with them already...

Somehow we track down one of the original people that we were dealing with, we hand her the paper and do more charades of picking up boxes and trying to take them away. She motions for us to wait and she vanishes.

By this point it's SO frustrating to not understand the system or the language but the "pointy talk"and the charades are also so hilarious that I'm just falling apart laughing.

More time passes and we wait until the girl and her two helpers come out from the back with our fans. She puts them on the ground and we dive at them. But she shakes her head and motions for us to wait again.

Nooooooooo...............!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She goes away again and finally comes back with a cart but by this point we don't care. here are our fans. we want them. done.

We just picked up the fans, balancing these huge boxes in our arms until we can't see eachother or her and then precariously head for the escalator with her running after us with the cart and us teetering down the escalator yelling "no, really it's fine...! We've got it...!" until we got out of the building.

crazy americans...

So we dried the laundry with our new fans...

On dressing room tables
On light fixtures...

And in the parking lot...
AND THEN... We got already for a show for the press and streams of people start pouring in the backstage door and wandering around. There are literally hundreds of people funneling through the door as we're trying to set up the show, train our stagehands, actors walking around in underwear with wig caps on and our two company managers desperately trying to get everyone to just keep walking into the house and not wander off and in the meantime figure out why all these people are here when we didn't sell tickets and why they are walking thru the backstage door.

Once all 500+ of them are in the house we find out three things: 1. Someone sold tickets and we don't know who that was. 2. There's only one door open to the entire theatre and it's the backstage door. 3. The theatre administrative types are so concerned about all these extra people in the house (they tell us they didn't sell the tickets, they thought we sold the tickets) that they call the cops for extra security. So now we have 2 dozen cops roaming the house and 500 more people in the audience than we expected.

Not surprisingly, the stage manager holds the show until we can figure this out. And there are so many people arguing in front of house that no one can tell what's going on. Our production manager wants everyone out except the press, the paying audience doesn't want to leave and the theatre is angry because they didn't make money on ticket sales. So half an hour into the "discussion" our PM realizes that we won't get the show up and run in the time we have alotted, which means overtime, more money etc. so he cancels the show. Just like that. And kicks everyone out.

A note for future reference when kicking out an angry audience, make sure they have an exit door that doesn't go thru backstage...

It got ugly in a fast hurry with lots of people not wanting to leave the theatre at all and then hovering around the stage door waiting for us to come out. But the cops stood around and we got in our buses and got out of the parking lot somehow...

And none of us are really clear on what all happened and how that went down... But start to finish it was a grueling day.

I know I said this about Shanghai, but i really mean it this time.

let's not do this like this again.

ever.

The Wall

We chose Mutianyu, because it's slightly farther away from Beijing than Badaling (the closest and most popular wall site) and we wanted something less touristy.

There were three of us and we decided to take a cab rather than figure out the vagaries of the Chinese bus system, which would involve switching buses at least three times. Getting a cab to take us more than an hour out of the city and explaining where we wanted to go and that we wanted to go out there and then have them stay and then take us home was very tricky. We eventually enlisted the help of the hotel desk and a concierge who spoke a little English and set something up for us.

The cab ride was closer to 2 hours because the driver kept getting lost and having to get out and ask for directions and then get back in and turn around and drive back up the road we had just driven down. At one point i heard him muttering under his breath and heard the word "badaling" and I'm SURE he was wishing that we just wanted to go to the closest and most available wall site. Funny how some things translate even when you can't speak the language.

But we finally arrived at the foot of the mountain where you can see the long serpentine wall crawling over the mountains in the distance. You can walk up to the actual wall or take many different types of conveyances. We chose the chair lift for time and it was high off the ground. I had to keep reminding myself to breathe...

Here we are just inside the doorway. Aubrey is on my right and Kirsten on my left. Aubrey is also going to Thailand in a week so we plan to meet up here and there over the next 5 weeks. She's delightful and I'll enjoy traveling with her.

The views are breathtaking. As with other amazing well photographed monuments - like the Grand Canyon - photos don't do it justice.

Mutianyu is known for multiple little parapet guard towers, like small castles here and there throughout it's length.

You can walk through them, go up to their tops and stand on the rooftops overlooking the valleys and mountains and miles and miles of Wall.

Or sit and look out the windows... The stairs are STEEP. And they are all different sizes and shapes... And angles...
Makes for fun optical illusions...

We climbed all over for a couple of hours and met people who had started at Badaling and walked from Badaling to Mutianyu in a couple of hours. They got to see areas of the wall that are normally shut off to tourists because of the decay and danger factor. I wish we had more time to do something like that.

And then we tobogganed down the mountain!
We each got our own sled and you have a hand brake and you just rocket around the curves til you get to the bottom. Definitely an unbeatable way to go down a mountain...
Another of the world's many wonders.

Check.

Shanghai load out

4 Clark Transfer trucks packed into 6 smaller Chinese trucks, which means a new pack list for every truck which means hours more work as we shoehorn things together and try to figure out how to pack on the fly.

Hazardous metal ramps with zero tread...

And no light
Lots of labor and heat though...

Took us 5 hours. And we may or may not be leaving this city missing some of the things we came with... A hazard of being in someone else's house and having things grow legs and "walk off..."

We walked home through a completely empty People's Square at 3AM, which is like being in Times Square by yourself.

And then we had to finish packing and catch our shuttle to the airport at 10AM the next morning. 60 people checking out of the same hotel at the same time and trying to catch the same plane...

And then the fun really started. All of us have been in consumer heaven here in Shanghai where everything is SO cheap. I think the Hairspray company has singlehandedly boosted the Chinese economy for the past month. Most people - myself included - are finished Christmas shopping plus all the personal shopping, the handbags, the suits and dresses and winter coats people have commissioned from Asian tailors, the art pieces that were purchased... A LOT of stuff.

Now we have to get this all home.

However, we found out the day before we left Shanghai that the luggage requirements were different on the planes flying us to Beijing, in that our suitcases had to weigh under 44lbs. 50lbs is the normal requirement on US flights and that 6lbs makes a HUGE difference. But we were told that we could have as many suitcases as we wanted, they just couldn't weigh over 44lbs and the rules were strict.

So of course the solution is to do more shopping and buy more luggage.

We arrived at the airport looking like we are taking off for year long trips around the world, several people with 4 or more bags apiece. And we get in line and then the info starts trickling down from the front of the line.

It's not 44lbs, it's 44kg...

And it's not per bag, it's for all your bags together!

And your carry-on can't weigh over 5kg.

And you can't travel batteries on the plane... (why?? don't know)

There's no adequate way to describe what it's like to see 60 people in line with 180+ pieces of luggage all hearing different things from different people who have talked to other people with a limited knowledge of English to our complete un-knowledge of Chinese and tried to figure out what was going on...

I don't think anyone paid overage fees. I'm positive most people's luggage weighed over 44kg. We somehow made it to Beijing with all our stuff - which is something that has never happened when we're all flying American airlines... - and now we get to look forward to deja vu all over again as we try to leave the country.

And Beijing??? Well, that's different post all together. The load in was 3 days and we had a near riot last night when we canceled our invited dress for the press...

more later with pictures...

xox
k

Lunch

So this is what i ordered for lunch the other dayAnd this is what it looked like when i finished picking out the chicken there are a few peanuts left in there and the rest is chilies

chilies!

and it was pretty good, maybe even some of the best chinese food we've had so far.

Shanghai Snapshots

The Hotel :
The hotel is great. It's the Park Hotel, otherwise known as the International Hotel right on the People's Square in downtown Shanghai and only a 5 minute walk from the theatre. There are a couple of quirky things in the hotel, as you might expect. The beds are rock hard, so that rumor at least was correct. But the hotel keys are where it's at. In your room you slide your key in this little slot by the door which turns your lights on and activates a little sign outside your door letting housekeeping know that you are in your room.

For theatre people on tour, this is perfect because it ensures that A. you always know where your hotel key is and B. housekeeping won't wake you up crazy early trying to clean your room. The hotel key is also necessary in the elevator. You have to slide the key into an internal slot before you can punch your hotel floor button. I guess this is an extra security precaution but it's hilarious to watch a bunch of people get on the elevator all at once and fumble for their keys and get to the key pad and move back to let the ones in the back get forward before the elevator passes their floor. I'm on 3 so I have to be extra quick.

Breakfast is free at the hotel and is an interesting experience. You can get “western” food, like decent croissants, bread with a cardboard texture and a fresh omelette made to order or “Eastern” food like fried noodles and bok choy as well as fresh fruit, a selection of salamis, dumpling soup and spring rolls filled with a sweet red bean paste. I do some mixture of East and West and my favorite discovery is Chinese yogurt that comes in tiny little containers with a foil top. You punch it with a straw and drink it. Delicious!

The Show:
Our dressers have done well but there's one translator in our department, three on our wardrobe crew and 6 dressers. You can do the math and figure at any given point in the show two people are having a conversation in two different languages. Even though both of you KNOW the other person don't understand what you are saying you still have to talk but augment it with pointing and charades. This means that certain things have been done differently than we would prefer, but the task of trying to communicate in nuances is exhausting and after a while you are just grateful it's getting done at all. I'm curious to see this done all over again in Beijing...

The Food:
A few quirky things about eating in China. Two people sit down and get one menu. You have to ask for a second menu and that's a word I still don't have down in Chinese so we just share. The waitress will also hand you your menu and then wait to take your order so you are looking through a 14 page menu trying to decipher the pictures and weird translations to find something that isn't internal organs while the waitress stands at your shoulder and watches you. You don't want her to go away either because we found out the hard way that if they go away they don't like to come back and you have to search for them and use some combination of all your Chinese words “hi, please, thank you, iron pants, etc.” to ask them to come back and take your order. Try conveying that by charades some time and you will feel my pain...

You will rarely get napkins and a couple of times eating noodles with chopsticks will teach you to carry your own.

Hot tea is brought automatically whether or not it's 110 degrees outside.

Eating in China with a vegetarian (i.e. Kirsten) under all of the above conditions makes for extra special fun. There are two things the Chinese don't have a firm grip on, one is pure vegetarianism (fish and chicken find their way into most things one way or another) and the other is decaf. By this point I would no longer be a vegetarian were I her. It's too much work.

Some of the best street food is on the corner by the theatre. Grilled lamb skewers sprinkled with a spicy powder, little fried dough balls covered in sauce and dried seaweed flakes and a bubble tea will cost you less than a dollar.

The Toilets:

It does eliminate the ickiness of sitting on a public toilet seat but raises the ante of adding balance and clothing arrangement to your bathroom experience. We are told to expect more of these in Beijing.

The Subway:
In addition to taking you places, the underground subway is a huge shopping mall and food court. And it's air conditioned and clean. Of course the subway doesn't take you many places so that's the tradeoff. In the same way that if you want, say, a surge protector/power strip you have to go to a grocery store and look in the food aisles with the cookware if you want cheap designer bags (Channel and Prava) and Rollex watches or Hong Kong tarts you go to the subway.

The Bars:
Barbarosa: beautiful Turkish themed bar in a small pond covered with lotus blossoms and accessed by a bridge with a free hookah pipe when you buy a bottle of wine on Tuesdays.

Face bar: another beautiful bar set way back off the road behind several other buildings and restaurants. Outdoor seating with big trees hung with lanterns covered in white drapes. I ordered a mojito and sat outside with that tall glass in very international company and felt like an Out of Africa expat.

Radisson Sky Bar: Set in the glass done of the Radisson hotel and presided over by Stardust the Filipino cover band. In rapid succession they covered Dido, Guns and Roses, Bob Marley and Men at Work and said they would take requests for Japanese or Korean pop songs as well as anything in Chinese. The girls that front the band are cute and funny and sexy and the guys in the back look like Cheech Marin and someone who used to be in Fleetwood Mac. The drinks are outrageously expensive but the atmosphere is worth a visit.

Go-Karts: you get to drive! And drink beer! Until 2AM! How can you pass it up???

There's so much more but it's late and I'm out.

Xoxo
k

Dragons and Doorways

Some of my favorite aspects of this garden

You can see how the bodies form the walls...