The Nanjing Experience

2010-04-25T07:47:00.001-07:00

Ok I have to be brief with some subjects since I haven’t updated in ages and I’m off back to Spain soon sooo.

One late evening on the way home around February I heard someone behind me calling out.

“Hey, Laowai!”

Laowai means foreigner.

SO I look around and there’s this other foreigner guy there in a long black coat, dark sunglasses (it’s well past getting dark hours) an earing in his ear an his long hair tied back. He looks like some rocker from the Rolling stone’s era.

He then begin a conversation with me, obviously drunk, but it was amusing none the less. Now when someone like that invites you back to his place for some beers (or juice in my case) one would normally politely refuse due to his crazy appearance, but then that wouldn’t make a fun interesting Blog entry now would it?! Also I had just watched “Yes Man” so I was kinda persuaded by that.

On the way there I start getting worried when he asks of my sexual preferences

“ You’re not gay are you, cus I’m not gay, Just looks weird for an old man to take a young guy back hehehehe”

When we got in he had this dvd playing , Layer cake (gangster film). He suggested continuing it. After talking throuihg mot of it ad telling me of his adventures around the world he sees a guy get shot in the face “Nasty, Oh I know something you’ll get a kick out of” he says.

He goes nto his bedroom and re-appears later with a couple of replica guns, at this stage I had my keys between my knuckles just in case lol. He kept on freaking me out with stories of being in a maximum security prison for some crazy fighting stuff and doing impressions of mad monkeys and falling over drunk. He had this routine, when he came in he took a leak, then had some whisky then went with me on the balcony. He repeated thi process 4 times in the 2 and a half hours I was there. It was very interesting and fun experience in the end, though a bit freaky. I managed to get out in the end by saying it was late yada yada, so he was like “ok ill let you be on your way, but you haven’t stolen anything have you? Cus if u have id kill you” hehehe what a lovely guy, ^_^

Avatar

Went with most of the studio and friends to see the movie avatar in 3D!!!! Was fantastic, my fave movie now! Loved every minute, I know it’s just a movie and not worth mentioning in a blog but wow WHAT A MOVIE!

Weekend (sunday)

Me and Louis would sometime go to down town to see the sites, one day a couple of girls came up to us in the street and started talking to us. They were polite and all, but one girl just kept unloading a barrage of questions, it was more like an interview than a conversation! After a while they invited us to go for some tea with them, luckily Louis had read about these sort of women, they take you to tea houses here, then when the bill comes it would cost you a ridiculous amount of money apparently paying for the “girl’s time”. If you don’t pay they get these massive blokes onto you. They should pay the guys since they are sooo crazy about western men lol. Warren phoned up mid conversation to ask us to play pool in the evening so we had that as an escape plan. Later on 5 other girls in the park asked us to take their photos, so we did then they got into a conversation with us again like the last lot, this time a bit less interview like. We couldn’t accept their offer of going with them to see the Chinese circus due to meeting up with Warren, apparently after doing some reading that turned out to be some sort of a scam too where they’d buy the tickets for you then say it costs a ridiculous amount of money.

It was a bit disappointing thinking you were the man walking through town and getting girls flying at you from all sides and having to turn them down and then finding out they were scams. Lol

Later we met up with Warren, he took us to a nice restaurant where we at some lovely frogs legs, they weren’t half bad actually, taste a bit like fish mixed with chicken, though the little bones can be off putting. Later through the eal they started up some Karaoke (KTV it’s called here) and this man entertained everyone singing a traditional Chinese song vry very badly, so badly this guy from the other table (one of his friends) turned to us and was like “bu hao” (not good) and doing the thumbs down singnal with a look of disgust over his face.

We later wnt home for bed, pheeew what a long Sunday.

2010-02-04T12:02:00.000-08:00

Hello again, man I’m updating less and less now-a-days it seems.

Wow it’s been so long I still haven’t talked about new years eve!!

Well we worked all day but after work we went out to eat HOT POT! :D We wanted to do something afterwards to celebrate the coming new year, we asked warren if he wanted to play pool and he seemed well up for it, though at the hot pot meal, one of the spoons was left in the hot pot at the steam made the handle extra hot so when Warren grabbed it to get some food he burnt his hand, that night he coldn’t play pool. L That idea went down the drain, we wanted to get some fireworks and go onto the roof and launch them from there! Sadly noone was interested, well at least we had the TV to watch it on, oh but guess what! The cable connecting to the ariel decideds to get al broken yay. We couldn’t even make it to the river side in the centre of town since the subways close at 11:00 pm. We decided to go to bed disappointed.

I have now been changed locations at work. As before I was working on designing background aras for the film, now I am painting backgrounds so when they get round to painting the actual layouts that will appear in the film thye can colour pick from the paintings. Here is a photo of my new work space. With conveniently placed fruit to how how healthy I am XD lol

The new area is now more private being inside a room with only four desks. Now I share with Louis, Phoenix and a new guy Wu hao who is pretty awesome. For my first meal in my new area I decided to order from a new menu that had appeared in the take away drawer at work. Of cousre it’s not traditional Chinese food, it's a hamburger, but it had a funny design of pikachu on the cover. Aa what you can get away with here lol.

After a little stroll back from work on a Friday we bumped into a small gathering, turned out in the centre were supposedly shoaling monks recruiting people to train kung fu to. Course they weren’t real, one was even having a cigarette while others performed. They kept trying to speak to me in super local and fast Chinese, and I kept repeating I don’t speak Chinese. Hmm a lot of the older generation doesn’t seem to mind, they’ll just babble on at a hundred words a minute anyway hehehe. I better learn Chinese quickly then!

After that we saw the new super duper shopping centre had actually been built, man they work fast here! It was a mess last time I saw it, still rubble in loads of places. Me and Louis visited the place on the Sunday . On the way people had set up mini stalls on bikes and were selling lil’ fishes and tanks. When we got there we found out that it’s soo convenient, big shopping centre, small prices and soo local, we don’t have to catch a bus to get there and speaking of convenient, the tram is up and running and only cost 2 rmb ( 20 cents/15p ) from one end of the town to the other! So getting to the subway to go into the city centre won’t have to cost 14 rmb like with the taxis. It’s all new and shiny too!

We found a poster from someone’s “men’s fitness” magazines which was quite interesting. So we thought phoenix might enjoy the photo, so we put that on his desk, but it wouldn’t be complete without toilet paper conveniently placed around it :P.

Turns out he wasn’t happy :O *shock*

(As a disclaimer, he wasn’t bothered really, just he looks quite upset in the photo XD )

Moving into the new place meant I met Wu hao, who’s a pretty cool guy. His digital painting skills are very impressive and he’s super generous, I swear I’m going to be fat from the amount of sweets he keeps offering everyone. I say offer, he buys a box and just says “here you go” while chucking it on your desk haha. He’s also taken us out for a meal since he got a raise. Was a nice place, we had the usual set of dishes we would pick at. There were these croquet ball thingies, soup with bones in, fried octopus beef with a load of fat on in soy sauce, and the fat didn't taste to bad, god knows what it’s doing to my arteries though :S. Spicy beef and other tasty plates were served.

Next Wednesday the studio is sending an assistant to go off and buy the workers tickets to see the movie AVATAR!!!!!! In 3DDDDDDDD yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah woot! If anyones lived in Shanghai before they would know that you have to get your tickets way early in advance in order to see a popular movie and only on the weekdays, so not Sunday. I’m so happy, thought I’d have to go without seeing it. :D Every time we went it’s been sold out.

I will have to go out sometime and get some new clothes, I can’t keep wearing the same three jumpers, I’m gonna see if I can get anything cool looking at good prices sometime at the weekend.

I traveled to Carrefour on my own the other day. It was fun and relaxing, I walked for a while, then got lost, so hopped on the tram, then got lost again, but it was interesting seeing all the new areas an living establishment. Finally I gave up and took a taxi there, to “Jalefor”. They had snickers and other sweets on offer :D so I bought a few!!!! Yummeh!! Only 3.5 rmb a bar, that's about 30 pence. Considering how much imported chocolate is here that's a bargain and a half!

After I left the store and walked a bit down the road, some guy called out to me.

“Oh no” I thought. “this guy just wants me to buy something”

After talking to me he just randomly kept asking me lots of personal questions like where do I live, do I work here etc, but in the the end after asking him why he wanted to know, he told me he just wanted to practice his English. So after a long chat with this random guy he showed me to the tram so now I know where to go to get off at Carrefour J. Very helpful.Lots of people here want to practice their English with foreigners.

After one day at the studio I was walking home with shake shake and to our surprise we past a big fire in an apartment area. When we got a closer look it turned out to be a flaming mo-ped!! And there was this guy poking it with a rather long stick of bamboo.

Me, Louis and Miya met up to town and went off to explore the older parts of shanghai, the areas that have more Chinese style buildings as opposed to the western architecture they have in the centre part due to other countries taking over areas in the past. It was packed there, and very turisty, we saw many an Englishman and for some reason all the westerners here are the size of basketball players, no wonder they think all westerners are super tall!

2009-12-30T13:28:00.000-08:00

Heya, it’s been a while. So many things have been happening.

I got a nice little photo of more interesting food, I mean how weird can ordering a chicken be? So when I ordered the half a chicken, I literally got and chicken cut in two and cooked. I had a go at eating it’s brain!!! Muahahaha, didn’t notice anything since it was sooo small, didn't want to touch any more of the head and I just left the feet alone. :S Apart from that, good chicken. This one seemed like it must have been cooked for hours n hours, the meat literally fell off if I touched it with my chopsticks.

I thought I’d get some more photos of the food I bought to cook at home, these white things in the bowl are rice muched up into balls with a black been that looks like sesame seeds crushed up into a paste on the inide, but it was sweet, they must have added sugar or something. There’s also a lovely photo of me eating one to show the functions hehehe.

Me and Louis went froa wonder around to see th old part of the town, it looks more like I imagined China, though Shanghai isn’t very old, about 2 hundred years old so the buildings they have there look quite modern and there aren’t many traditional Chinese styled buildings.

We also went to a great little market place which stank and no wonder, there were loads of fish stools. Sadly I didn’t have my camera, but Louis got some photos. They had slabs of wood with chopped up fish on and blood everywhere, looked like a mini massacre hehe. Was very interesting seeing all the fish in tanks….some out of tanks splashing around on the floor hehe.

It was cool seeing all the different clothes stools and experiencing that atmosphere.

There were some very cool fruit in the green grocers which I’ve had my eye on buying for a while. If anyone’s played the Legend of Zelda they will find the bomb shaped fruit very funny! I also bought this spiked thing. They are both kinda similar to lichi on the inside, though the bomb has a lot less insides.

It was aron’s Birthday, so Louis had a great idea of what to get him, we went out and bought a little shin chan model and the others in the studio made some lasses for him so now it dos actually look just like him hehehe and with army clothes on since he’s very interested in that sort of thing.

On the trip to Shanghai we went to the shopping mall and got some photos of the more interesting things.

Warren (Wong I lei) Calvin and Xiao Fei took me to Nanjing to sort out my visa, also I got to see the place and take some photos, though my phone camera was full and I didn't bring the cable to upload the photos to my laptop so I only managed to get to photos. I will be going again so I’ll have a chance to show more photos. The place is very big and quite industrialized though there were very traditional areas that looked just how I would have imagined old china to look like. It was fantastic, I will be going back there and buying a carved stamp to personalize my work. Don’t know if to use my English name in Chinese characters or my Chinese name Jenny gave me….King Kong (Jing Gong) ¬_¬;

I also grabbed a photo of a bowl full of glass ornaments which looked like the star bits from the Mario Galaxy game, now I know where Nintendo went for inspiration hehehe.

Christmas came though naturally they don’t celebrate it too much, I decorated my area with a mini Santa hat and cards that I received and of course a hot lady dressed in a Santa hat for the desktop of my computer.

The whole studio was decorated with new years banners with the symbol of the tiger. They are also selling a lot of tigger cuddly toys in the super markets.

With Birthday money and Xmas money I got myself a big Tv for my room, but wow it wasn’t very expensive, sure it’s not a Samsung, but a samsing and its huge at the back, but it does the job for whenever I need a relaxing gaing session at the weekend or when I have time.

I had to change the layout of the room to fit it accordingly, here’s some photos of that. Oh and me posing as someone wanted to see my new hair cut.

Walking around in search of a SIM....

2009-12-07T03:35:00.000-08:00

Ono Decided to wash the dog, so naturally she finds the dirtiest area on the balcony an wipes herself against it. Later that day we went off in search of sim cards for our phones and on the way we see two old people using a really odd way of creating popcorn. Didn't know what it was at firt, old man just turning this heavy cast iron tea pot shaped thingy on a spit roast then they pick it up, put one end near a bag and BOOM! it explodes scaring the s*** outta me. We got a photo later on of the exploding popcorn.

Near the apartment where we spend most of our sleeping nights there's what looks like a mini park/gym for old people, like the ones in Spain, some things like the pull up bar are cool, so I had a little work out with the old people in the morning, Im determined to find soeon who does kung fu, maybe an old master?

Later on Louis thought it was a good idea to go on the roof, so we al went up, you get a great view of Shanghai from up there, would be awesome to draw, I plan to do that one sunday!! :D

We found this other park with a pipe in covered up to keep warm, first time we all saw it we thought it was a small boy crying against the wall o I thought it funny to get some photos near it haha.

Big update

2009-12-07T02:22:00.000-08:00

Haven't updated in a while, been mainly working and the free time I have had I spent in the city centre.

At the end of the week before last, I think, we all decided to go out and celebrate the trailer being completed so we went to a very interesting restaurant There were fake trees, fake bamboo and giant mushrooms to eat under
. It was our first real hot pot experience in china. So daring were we that we had ordered some wierd eel like fish, tasty bacon, chicken wings,pig insides, meat ball thingies with squirty juice inside. The name come after the sound it makes when you bite it and all the liquid gets squirted on the wall (like what happened to me) or over the person sitting next to you. A good hot pot meal isn't complete without of course, pig's brain. That was.....interesting, I have some photos of that . The texture is like biting into a foamy, disolving bit of meat. The thought of eating brain kinda puts me off aswell. :S

Me and Louis discovered this amazing little park, great place to visit, sit down on the grass and enjoy the sun. What's funny is there are a lot of todlers walking around with these odd trousers with big holes in the back which are there for easy pooing access :S .....lovely.... O_o...

When we went to Shanghai city centre to watch the film 2012 we saw this guy holding up puppies by their feet and brushing them to sell, poor things, one was shaking fro the cold, so we named him Shake shake.

Again we visited the artifact museum so I got some more photos of that, check out the "Mulan" horse!!

The old people must be really strong here, I got a photo of this old guy pulling 20 odd chairs strapped to theis wheelie cart thing.

Disaster struck friday evening, the TV broke so we couldn't play on the wii :(, however Louis introduced us to a very english series n his laptop , "the inbetweeners", good ol' english nostagia. We had a guy come in, but he can't fix the TV, looks like we need a new one...damn!

Two girls from the studio took us out for a meal at a dumpling place, I didn't know what I wanted so I randomly pointed at some things , turned out I bought donkey meat in dumplings and some grass stuff hahaha, wasn't too bad, but I'll stick to beef and chicken lol.

Today is the first day I've relaxed in ages, just at home writing the blog, not walking all over shanghai or working in the studio all day. Also had my first real deadline on friday, but got everyhing done, so wasn't too late getting home.

Louis

2009-11-25T13:19:00.000-08:00

After running through the airport with Warren we finally got to where Louis would be appearing from though we still had a bit of a wait. I managed to get a nice blurry image of him.

On the bus back Louis spotted a street sign. The name was rather amusing so we had to take a photo. Welcome to Long Dong avenue!!

After Louis got setteled into the apartment that Saturday the team fro Nanjing went out to a restaurant for a celebrtory meal, more great food! :D

After the meal Warren took me, Louis and Jenny to have a foot massage. Naturally three women massaged us men and Jenny had some young guy massage her. First started with our feet in a wooden bucket with a lumpy floor filled with warm steamy water, then the massaging began as we watched the chinese version of strickly come dacning. Way more intersting than in europe, the dances are more modern rather than ballroom classic style.

On the way to work there's a Chinese version of the KFC so had a get a photo of that.

As louis hadn't been to shanghai centre that sunday we went there and spent most of the day walking around, by the time we got back we were knackered, sadly i ran out of space for photos before it got dark. The water front is amazing when its lit up. Some times I wish I had a chinese mask to look chinese. There are these guys going around tryin to sell these really tacky light things to foreigners so we get them shone at us every time we walk past them.

We refound our youth at toys r us, they had a huge selection of awesome toys, makes me wish I was 10 again, the new power rangers they have look fantastic, I wanted to get loads of photos, but every time I got my camera out to take a photo of the display some woman came over and asked me not to take photos....I could just draw the toy layouts if I really wanted to steal their ideas...garrrrr!!! SO I can't show you all the magical world which is toys r us.

I've decided to put my laptop on all night playing the chinese audio so hopefully it can sink in while I sleep. Either that or I get no sleep :P hehehe

More food!

2009-11-17T05:27:00.000-08:00

Today I had a break through! I went out and bought myself some breakfast and a bowl all by myself with my awesomely amazing chinese consisting of.....maybe three words hehehe After everyone got up (Aron, shake shake and Luker) we were off to Shanghai's main city area were we visited th natural history museum. The museum looked as old as the fossils it was exhibiting, but it as still facinating. Managed to get some decent photos of the displays. In the human evolution area there wre some cavemen doing what cavemen do best, smashing two rocks together, though strangely I found one who had developed a femenine side. He looked as though he wa holding a little mirror and applying makeup, very odd, sure he wasn't but damn well like he was! haha
Sadly my phone ran out of battery before I could get photos of some of the best pieces, life sized animal models of a whale shark and other huge life forms. The cut open reptiles with their guts hanging out for veiwing purposes werent pleasant to look at while eating chicken flavoured crisp thingies.
When we got outside it was raining but luckily there are soo many tall buildings we were mostly protected if we stayed near the buildings edge. We pasted an art supplies shop were I spent some monies :D then into a small book shop that had stupidly cheap books. I was told they were unoffical prints....seems everything is pirateable here lol.
Astro boy never happened :( it had stopped being shown sadly, but we'd done so much that day I was knackered anyway.
Got back home safely, tomorrow Louis is coming from England, guess that means another celebratory meal, yay!!!!More food! :D

Food

2009-11-17T05:23:00.000-08:00

At work a girl from the other studio came over to work in the building I am in and so now she sits opposite me. She loves her strange foods and keeps telling me I should try pigs brain andduck blood soup and fish head soup, fish eyes and other bizarre things. Sounds fun...though not too keen on the brains...... :S...might try the ants she told me about. Also in some parts of china they get the very young mice, pick them up with chopsticks and dip them in vinegar, when the moue squeeks three times you know its ready to eat, so they call this dish "squeek squeek" hehehehe

My first real shopping experience was interesting, not used to the amount of people in a shopping centre so pushing the trolley around was a mission in itself. They had this fruit I have never sen before so I had to take a photo, I must hav elooked odd taking photos in the fruit and veg section hahaha XD. Also got a photo of the li'l crabs on offer and bought some new flavours to try out. The pot noodles here are like the pot noodles in England but TIMES x10!!! I got myself some frozen buns then found out we don't have anything at home to steam them, so stuffing myself with yummy Baozi (buns) would have to wait till i buy myself a steamer :(
Tomorrow we are off to the natural history museum then to the cinemas to watch Astro boy!!!!! Hopefully the weather will hold up, it got so cold in such a short amount of time, it's literally freezing cold now during the day. Lucky I brought my big coat!!

Museum of treasures

2009-11-17T05:20:00.000-08:00

At the weekend me and Shake shake (wen) went and checked out the museum of treasures,they had loads of plates, very old money, gold and oter things, but what I found amazing were the paitnings there, now 've seen some of these on the internet but never knew in real life they would b bigger than myself! Amazing, so I took some photos, though I didn't have much space on my camera for more.
Me and Shake shake grabbed some food later, BBQ chinese style and I had octopus on a stick, yummy!!!

Subway

2009-11-17T03:46:00.000-08:00

On the subway I got Luker to get some photos of Shake shake sleeping on the metro hehe

New trailer

2009-11-10T06:40:00.001-08:00

The studio had fiished its new trailer that would have the english sound done in LA by technicolor so all the team went to the cinema in Shanghai to see how it looked on the big screen. The trip there took about an hour and a half and then we had to wait in the cinema for more people to come, all this for a 1 minute trailer hehehe. There we met up with the Manager who I thought when I first saw him was Masi Oka (Hiro in TvSeries Heroes) as he looked exactly like him. Everyone there thought so too so we asked him to pull the wobbly cheeks face like Hiro.
Later we had a bg dinner out in a tai restaurant since Thom the director was off to LA the next morning. Food again was great!! :D

Shanghai centre

2009-11-10T06:16:00.000-08:00

Warren invited me and Wen (also known as Shake shake) to play pool. Warren kicked our arses, but we had a great time. He got talking to me about things to do in that area of shanghai, the only two things were, pool and foot massage, but there's much more in the main city of Shanghai.
Friday night me, Wen, Warren and Shou Fe drove to Shanghai centre. Man those buildings were huge, we didnt stay long though and we had to get the subway train back. There were lots of people coming up to me because I was a foriegner asking if i want a "massage with sexy girl" "She's very young" hehehe, So we all had a laugh about the sort of dodgy massage business it would be XD.

Sunday Me and Wen took the subway back to the main city and walked around town visiting places such as the museum and restaurants. Some of the hitory at the museum was really interesting, but we were soo tied from playing on the wii till 2:30 am and then getting up relatively erly the next day. We also saw the biggest building in the whole of China, for a meal up at the top would cost around 5000 rmb, 500 euros roughly. This time I pretended I only spoke spanish when i was asked about buying things and going for massages, seemed to do the trick.
When we got home I relaxed talking with the housemate Ono and playing with the dog, Momo. She's a cute stray that Ono took in.

CHINA!!!!!!!

2009-10-30T12:21:00.000-07:00

Woohoooo, this Blog is about the experiences me and Louis will be going through as we work in Nanjing. Inspired by Gillian and co's blog "Nanjing adventures" http://nanjingadventures.blogspot.com/

I will be updating with photos and journal entries on what we get up to and the people we meet.

Enjoy :D

Keith