Nanjing Adventures: December 2008

Northwood Hills, London, 8.30am, we leave for the airport. 12.10pm flight departure. The flight from Heathrow, London to PuDong, Shanghai wasn’t too bad considering it was 10 and half hours long! The in flight entertainment was amazing! It had over 60 movies to choose from, loads which I hadn’t seen before, as well as albums to listen too and TV programs to watch. I opted for 4 films; Pineapple Express, Ghost Town, Mirrors and the Sex in the City movie but the plane landed before I could see the end of that one. So for the entire flight I stayed awake. Even though it was Virgin Atlantic, the economy seats are still tiny, only one way you can possibly sit really, absolutely no chance of getting any shut eye. 7.30am (China time, 11.30pm GMT) flight landing.

Calvin was at the airport to meet us coming out and to take us on the coach from PuDong airport to Shangahi city centre where we boarded a 3 hour train to Nanjing around 10am. At Nanjing train station we were met by Thom and Warren from Glory n Dream, where we all jumped in a taxi and headed to our apartment. The taxis in China are strange…they have a special caged seat for the driver, to protect him I guess, but it’s a bit Death Proof and with their crazy roads and drive wherever you want policy, I get a little nervous in them! Around 2pm, we arrive at our new lodgings for the next 6 months.

At first when we go in the place looks a bit ghetto but after some time you realize it’s the kind of place everyone lives in, in this big city. The block is completely safe, at least so far it has been! Not exactly South East London or nothing! By this time we’d been traveling for almost 24 hours with not much food, other than the plastic meals on the flight, so the guys kindly took us to a local restaurant to get some native Nanjing delicacies. Why was the first thing I ate in China a Thousand Year Old Egg? A very popular egg that is cooked in a certain way that makes the white kind of blue/transparent and the yolk blue and creamy. Tastes like egg but with a really unsettling texture! Been avoiding it ever since. Using chopsticks has been a challenge. Within the first week when I was getting accustomed to the different food and being hungry most of the time I was getting majorly stressed trying to use them. Being SO hungry and not being able to lift the food to my mouth. But now I am the chopstick master. Only thing I can’t do really is the slippery tofu in the canteen. By the end of 6 months I want to be the best, go back to the UK and be eating cereal and pizza with chopsticks! They actually make eating penne pasta way easier, you can just slide the chop stick through the middle!

Our Studio. The only warm place in Nanjing.

The studio we work in, is in one of the 3 major centers of Nanjing (how many ‘centers’ can an object have?) on the top floor of a school. 99 stairs up every morning and then again after lunch and if you want to go to the shop, you gotta do the 99 stairs again! So that 397 stairs in one day! We’ll all have thighs of steel when we come back. Our team is a small one, made up of about…let’s see…Me, Matt, Nicola, Alex, Thom, Warren, Calvin, Aaron, Ono, Jenny, Moon, Phoenix, Colour, Sin, Macy, Dumpling, Jack, Animo (Hiro Nakamura) , a guy whose name I cant remember…how many is that? Quite a small team for the pre-production of a feature film. Some of us are designing the look of the film while others are designing the animation style. I am layout designer. Right now, I am designing the Tank environment for a bunch of fish, which is fun but getting more difficult everyday. It’s hard working on one thing for such a long time, but it’s my job. Pft. If there is time, I will also be getting the chance to do character design work on Jack and Western background characters.

Got to decorate the work desk!

A sneaky glimpse at the production...shhh!

We work 6 days a week, Monday-Saturday, 9am-5pm and have one day off, which we like to use to visit ‘The DVD Shop’, where we can spend all our earnings on high quality DVD copies that will then sit in the apartment and never be watched! It’s my source of keeping up to date with cinema releases in the UK as China gets them on DVD shortly after they are released in the cinema. STILL waiting for Changling and Yes Man though! Grrr.

I think it’s about time to talk about the toilets here. Or as I have affectionately named them, Squatters. Small holes in the ground, still surrounded by a toilet seat but I don’t know why, it’s not for sitting on, which you must straddle and lower yourself over and leave your deposits. You also need to have your own tissue with you but it can’t be flushed, it’s placed into a waste bin, like one yo’d have in your home, simple plastic thing, no lid or cover of any kind. That means that when you squat down your face is so near a basket full of tissue soiled with urine, poop and other bloodily elements. The toilets we have in our workplace are even worse though, They aren’t cubicles, they are waist high brick walls with no doors and no circular hole for you to go in, but a long trough-like canal that runs along the length of the bathroom. And remember, we work in a school building, so when you go to the bathroom you are at risk of being in the middle of a squat, your head poking over the top of the brick block thing and then a Chinese student walking in, who will then catch your eye and stare because you’re from the west. Hasn’t happened to me yet, but if it does it with be AWKWARD!!! And I’m scared of panicking and then losing my footing, falling in the trough to be washed away with the current. I refused to become a squatter, but after one and half weeks, stuck in work, with no where else to go, I had to fold! But now I’m a pro! However, I still avoid it when I can.

Good excuse to go to Starbucks, is to use the proper toilet, the best toilet in Nanjing.

During the week the canteen in the school is open, that’s where we eat our lunch everday. The COLDEST place in Nanjing is our canteen! The tables and chairs are made of steel, I’ll be surprised if one of us doesn’t get piles by the end of winter! The food however is pretty good. It’s a lot simpler than the nice places Calvin likes to take us, our palettes aren’t used to such fancy food. Me and Nicola are common folk who like basic veg and plain rice! The meats the other guys get there are suspicious!

Favourite of the boys’ is beef on a stick! Nice.

On Saturdays, the canteen is closed because the school kids aren’t there so that’s the day we get to go somewhere else. We’ve been to the same little place every Saturday so far, but I love it! I get fried noodle with egg. It is the greasiest thing I’ve had here and it’s amazing! I like to stock up on my grease on Saturdays! They also do massive noodle soup dishes and rice, but I’m sticking to my greasy noodles for a while! The eatery has 2 floors but Matt doesn’t really fit in the upstairs.

Most of the food places here are obviously family run and so basic but I really like it, you can see the people making the food in their run-down kitchens with old pots and random pieces of wood everywhere! We’ve also been taken to a dumpling place, only once though, but I’d like to go back there. They were the first dumplings I had in China, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to eat too many of them cause I had them in Chinatown, London a few weeks before and although they are tasty the texture is old and they don’t sit too well in my stomach, so I only ordered a modest 6 dumplings, Nicola had 12, Alex 18 and Matt had 24! Which he ate all of plus one of Nicolas! That’s 25 dumplings and those things aren’t small!

Matt's Triumph over dumplings everywhere.

All the pre-production for the film is being done in Nanjing and the actual production is being made in Shanghai and the post-production in Beijing. We were invited to join Thom, Calvin and Warren on their business trip to Shanghai to meet the production team and brief them on the film and the style etc.

The team at Nanjing Train Station.

On the business side, it was a bit boring cause we don’t speak Chinese obviously but being invited was lovely and meeting the other people and going for dinner was great. One thing about Chinese people is that they are very hospitable; they all look out for us all the time. Alex couldn’t join us on the Shanghai trip because he fell ill a couple of days before. Thom helped him home from the studio when he wasn’t able to walk properly and Calvin brought him extra sheets and oranges to make him better. Our first day in Shanghai was spent at the studio, followed by dinner and then sleep at the hotel. The second day was also spent at the studio but afterwards on the way to the train station they took us into Shanghai city centre to see the sights. The place was massive and it seemed there were lots of shopping to be done! Hopefully we’ll get to return for a shopping spree before June. It’s quite funny walking through the streets and random people are trying to sell you anything! Mostly I heard a compliment followed by “You buy, watch? Bags? Shoes? Dvd?” and the same for Matt but ending with “Massage?”

Digiman Animation Studio, Shanghai.

Finally, something smothered in sugar!!! Oh wait...it's sweet potato. Still... sugar is sugar.

Looking dorky at Shanghai metro.

Sugar man, enjoying the sun.

Freezing in Shanghai

Glory N Dream team in Shanghai.

Dumpling, Aaron, Calvin, Warren, Macy, Me, Nicola, Matt, Thom.

Our Christmas day was spent at work! It was really surreal. They whole day I was thinking, “everyone back home will be waking up now or opening presents now or having their Christmas dinner now”. We had Christmas dinner too…in the form of Chinese Pizza Hut! Garden Veggie Pizza, tiny garlic bread and a cheesecake! Not quite the spread my Nanny puts on every year, but still nice. And as a Christmas gift we got to use knives and forks! After dinner, we went out with the people from the studio to a pool hall, which was nice of them.