Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Here.

I made it to Hong Kong! First city I've been in where I don't speak a word of the primary language. Given, everyone here speaks mandarin and english in addition to Cantonese, but it's still pretty cool to me.

Let's take a look at how i got here. Right now Spring Festival is still going on in China (the two weeks after Chinese New Year are included in Spring Festival, and are the biggest travel days in China), so plane tickets and bus tickets are quite pricey. Even though I had the advantage of being in Southern as opposed to Northern China (helpful when heading South to Hong Kong), plane tickets were still far too expensive. I'll cut through the 5 or so hours of irritated phone calls back and forth to different airline companies, and the different solutions that seemed like godsends but really fell through, and cut to what worked out in the end. So as I've mentioned, I've been in rural rural Southern China shooting, equidistant from two larger cities (equidistant being a four hour drive from both Guilin and Nanning). Luckily for me, one of the women on the shoot has an auntie in Nanning and, overhearing our conversation, told me there is a, GASP, overnight bus from Nanning to HongKong. Thank god. I got on the phone, booked a ticket, and shelpped myself out of bed on Tuesday morning to hitch a ride with some producers heading that way for a meeting. So, after two days of back to back 18 hour shooting I subjected myself to a 4 hour ride from 8-12, sat in a coffee shop from 1-7, and then sat on a bus from 8pm to 9am. Needless to say, I'm tired.

Whats Hong Kong like? Well, it's certainly interesting. The drive in over the bridge is absolutely stunning, high flying bridge over shining water descending into a shiny toy city. The streets here are the kind you see in old movies, cramped and winding and covered in neon street signs that obscure the sky above. I would love to have time to explore it, but I don't think I'm going to- work beckons.

Well, it's getting chilly and I have to pee so i'm going to go and find somewhere to eat, and, hopefully, pee.

Love
Jessie

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Anyone told you they love you lately??? I do. :) kk