From April 24-May 10, I was on the road, first travelling to Chengdu in Sichuan Province, and then to Beijing. 27 hours on the train from Ji'an to Chengdu. About the same from Chengdu to Beijing. For trips lasting 20+ hours, thank goodness for sleeper cars. Beijing to Ji'an, fortunately only 14 hours, in a hard seat.
We went to Sichuan to film an earthquake preparedness class that a kindergarten had prepared for its students. It was great fun to be around the hundreds of little kids, especially when they did their daily calisthenics. Watch the video: http://baby.163.com/special/5123zhounian/
In Beijing, we attended a week of workshops, documentary film screenings, and theatre performances at the Caochangdi Workstation, where we regularly stayed up until 2, 3, or even 4am each night. The young people there have lived incredibly fascinating lives, and I really admire the honesty and courage with which they told their own stories through film and performance. I was especially moved by Lin Tao's stories about his deceased father, who flitted in and out of his life for many years, Zhang Mengqi's "Self Portrait and Sexual Self-Education" theatre piece in which she used items of clothing to tell about her journey through life thus far, the life experiences of Wen Hui's "3rd Grandmother," Jia Nanan's film portrait of his grandfather, and Xiao Yin's documentary about her own village.
In the mornings, when there were no scheduled activities, I would get up early and head out into Beijing. I had been to Beijing before, in 2009, while my friend Victoria was studying abroad at PKU, when I visited most of the touristy sites, so this time around, it was more of revisiting some of my favorite spots (Beihai Park!), making some obligatory purchases (Wukesong Camera City--wow!) and hanging out with my friend Will.
All in all, it was an eventful, satisfying, memorable, and exhausting trip. I accomplished a lot, learned a lot, and met new people.
On the way back to Ji'an from Beijing, we stopped by my friend Liu Ran's house in Hebei Province. It happened to be Mother's Day, so Liu Ran excitedly bought her mom and grandma some fresh flowers for the first time in her life, and I got my dose of mother-daughter love that day. Liu Ran also visited her grandma's old house, where she grew up and which has been boarded up for years since her grandparents moved to town into a newer house. The neighbors keep a good watch over the house, and we later found out that they notified the police when they discovered the chain on the door was unhooked. Luckily, Liu Ran's dad came over to investigate while the police were still on their way, and he told them not to bother coming. When she heard about all of this, Liu Ran was incredibly saddened to know that she had been mistaken for an intruder in her own childhood home. But later, our hard labors planting peanuts on her family's land provided a welcome and hopeful end to her brief trip home.
Up north, the weather was quite comfortable and just beginning to warm up (we even had to wear coats in Hebei), but when we arrived back in Ji'an, we discovered to our dismay that summer was already in full swing, calling in its troops of mosquitoes, blazing sunshine, and humid heat to wage battle against us.
