About China blogosphere, travel, and entrepreneurship

My film “600″ which I shot in Shanghai in 2007 has recently been accepted into some major U.S. and international film festivals after a short successful China festival 2007 showing(3 awards in 2 festivals). I’ll be heading to the following venues in the next month Austin Asian American Film Festival, Vancouver Asian American Film Festival, International Community Film Festival(can’t make this one, it’s in England). I’ve been wanting to share “600″ with CNreviews for the longest time, but post production with my 2nd film “Drowning” prevented me from having any free time to write. BUT!!!! I FINALLY have some time, so here it is:

Background: I spent my post-college years all over China acting in movies before ending up in Shanghai. While living in Shanghai, I also took a part time job at an English teaching company formerly known as TalkdaTalk as an events coordinator(flexible, easy, I loved it!). When I was free, I would also teach English there and hosted company events. During my time there, I met a lot of English teachers; people from all walks of life now living in Shanghai as expats. Besides the English teachers I met at TalkdaTalk, I also met a huge number of them during social and expat community events. Why teach English? The reason being English teachers are a hot commodity and the Chinese pay nice $$$ for a full time teacher. Full time English teachers are making the ranges of 10,000-15,000 RMB per month. Even though that doesn’t sound a lot to people here in the States, you have to consider the cheap living standards in China where you can eat a cheap meal for 7 rmb( $1), share an apartment for 2000 rmb ($300). To put things into perspective, most of my Chinese local friends all make between 2000rmb-5000 rmb per month (note: most have a college degree). For this reason, people come from all over the world to teach and party in Shanghai.

The film’s core: The core of “600″ is about the loneliness and struggles with identity of an American ex-pat living in Shanghai teaching English. I used the stories of many expat English teachers as inspiration in writing “600″. The main motivation behind this film being the crazy stories I hear from people talking about their lives and how they somehow ended up in Shanghai. When I was living in China, I felt this aura from all the expats that they were all lost(myself included), and was looking for something. This maybe the reason why most of the expats I knew had different jobs and was always trying to do different things. They all deeply loved Shanghai for the city’s energy and were drawn closely to it. In getting to know more and more of these people, I realized most of them were all looking for something in life that they hadn’t found in their previous existence. As expats of Shanghai, they all loved the city and culture initially and are having the best times there. But gradually, over time, the reality and problems begin setting in… and this is where our film begins…

The film”600″ is online and you can watch it for free HERE

(feel free to donate $$$ to support my next film)

In my next post, I will focus on the theme from “600″ and talk about

Living in China as an Expat

Don’t touch that dial!

A small city now 45 minutes of bullet train away from Shanghai(was 2 hours a few years ago), Wuxi is and has been one of the brightest spots of tourism in all of China for the past ten years due to the film sets and the beautiful Tai Hu( Lake Tai). Of the “Three Heavens” outside of Shanghai: Wuxi, Suzhou, and Hang Zhou, Wuxi is more frequented due to the popular studio sets of many Chinese television series such as “Romance of the Three Kingdom”.

Three Kingdoms City - The title of all the films/tv series shot here are listed on wooden boards with each respective title.

After they built the sets a few years ago, they have also named one of the huge studio sets Three Kingdoms City. Although there are other sets next to the Three Kingdoms City, I’d have to say none are as exciting and magnificent. If you go visit during the day, be sure to catch the 1:30pm martial arts show held in the round Shaolin temple located in the center of the attraction. Each film set costs about 100 RMB to get in, there are a few around the area, but I’d skip out on the other ones and just go to Three Kingdoms City. They are all mainly the same; you seen one, you’ve seen all.

I don't even remember where this was, LOL, can't tell you how to get here, sorry!

Traveling tip: If you are ever visiting Shanghai and want to get away from the city for a weekend, visit these cities in the following order: Hang Zhou, Suzhou, Wuxi.

Traveling tip #2: Do NOT fall for overpriced ripoff tours like this one. $191/person for a one day trip is ridiculous.

YOU HAVE TO TRY THIS!!! 30 or 50rmb to rent this and take a picture! Bring own digital camera otherwise they charge you more!

How do I get there? If you decide to take a tour, it might be costly than going on your own(they charge locals and foreigners different prices for these tours due to language-barrier. Foreigners will most likely pay 4x the price of a local) But at least you don’t have to organize anything and worry about getting lost.

Wedding Crashers, well, a fake one...

WWJD? I’m a pretty adventurous cat, so I love to go out and explore, this is what I would do:

1. Get a map first and find out addresses of the spots I’d want to visit(from tourist guide pamplets available in your hotel room or internet sites. If your hotel has no tour guides, then you must be in a really ghetto part of town)

2. Buy a train ticket and go to that city.

3. Once there, take a taxi to the addresses (Make sure you get in a  legitimate looking taxi with a working meter or else you’ll get jacked without knowing it)

4. Once you get to the front gates of the attractions, buy tickets, and also get out 50-100 RMB bill ready to give out to walking guides looking for business. A lot of them can speak English, and they might cost more, but 50-100 RMB should be sufficient; unless there’s some new union or inflation in China I don’t know about. What SHOULD be included in that fee is a full day of walking around showing you around, showing you a nice restaurant to eat some local cuisine(invite them to eat with you even if they politely say no; common courtesy), and finding you a hotel if you need.

This isn't exactly England with the tall guards; THIS CHINA FOOLS!

Traveling Tip #3: DO NOT miss out on the world famous “Wuxi Spareribs” (pronounced Woo She Pie Goo). Ask a taxi driver and he’ll know where to take you.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Introduction(Who Am I?): I’m quite lazy, so please click on this —–> James Z. Feng <– introduction to who I am. Don’t wanna click it? Ok, fine, basically, I’ve been in China for past two years after I graduated college making films(mainly acting and directing) and did A LOT of traveling.

OK! Let’s get this baby started!

Hengdian, where is that? Many of you China touristy-amateurs are wondering why I would even bother bringing up Hengdian since you’ve never heard of it before. Let me ask you this, have you seen that new Jackie Chan/ Jet Li movie “The Forbidden Kingdom”? How about these films: ”Hero”? ”The Curse of the Golden Flower”? “The Promise”(Don’t watch it, trust me on this one)? Catching my drift? Great, congrats on your IQ and superb intellect(please pat yourself on your back, you are now officially in my book of smart)! jk. Yes, all those films were filmed in Hengdian, China.

Why are all these movies made in Hengdian? besides the scenery?

Well, the answer to that question is because IT’S FREE!!!

Hengdian does not charge these film crews $$$ for using their locations. The only stipulation the city has for films being made in Hengdian is that you use their main hotel “Du Jia Cun(the village of family Du)” for all your crew’s stay, and that’s it! I talked to a city official who was the commissioner of film there, and he said that Hengdian is not developed yet, so they are trying to attract all this movie business to build up the city both financially and also commercially. Their vision is one day Hengdian becoming the next Hollywood next to LA and Bollywood. The official said they now have a film school there in Hengdian for film/tv/broadcasting and he invited me to speak there, but I was too modest to accept that =P.

Traveling Tip- “How do I get to Hengdian?”: There’s a train that takes you from Shanghai to Wuye(closest city with train station), and then you have to take a taxi or bus to get to Hengdian. If you plan to visit Hengdian from Shanghai, I’d recommend you to just be a baller and spend 400rmb/day to hire a driver for two days and drive you there(the bus/train combo was not very enjoying…grrr… I’m still bitter). The drive from Shanghai is about 3-4 hours unless you get a flat tire like we did.

Introduction about Hengdian:

Hengdian is a very small boring town with one main street that is the main source of everything you’ll be needing to survive: restauarants(you can order delivery service to your hotel room and they don’t charge you delivery fee{all of China is like this}! the beauty of China! Some do have minimum but those are usually like $2), cafes(rip off U.S. wannabe cafes charge a ton for some lame sandwiches, I ate them everyday), shops, electronics(if your really cheap and stay at a hotel with no A/C and need to buy a fan) massage places(they hurt, a lot.), fruit shops, KTV,  and a police station in which I had the honor of visiting(we won’t go into why I was there). 

Anyhow,the town itself is quite ghetto and buildings are mainly old; I’m biased because I had to stay there for a few days and got bored of it quick. Hengdian’s official title is “Hengdian World Studios: The Chinese Hollywood”. Don’t get turned off by all the bologna I just fed you, because people don’t come to Hengdian to visit the poor buildings I mentioned; they come to see the beautiful scenery where all those big-time films were filmed at!

I was fortunate enough to work on “Kung Fu Killers” with David Carradine and Darryl Hannah last year which was shot in Hengdian. 

I’m not going to go into how beautiful the scenery is because I haven’t really seen it, hahaha, you all got tricked! What do you expect? I was there for work and had no time to really checkout the place. But I did take some pictures during my production so you can check that out.

Picture Time, YAY! Put your hands up!!! I know you all need it after staring at the computer for 10 days straight. 

The set of “Kung Fu Killer”

This is for you green people out there.

I have no idea why I took this picture, lol.

Hey look, it’s Bill!

My hotel room, I know you didn’t want to see this, but too bad, haha.

Hengdian was so boring, this is what I did all day! This and massages by some dudes with powerful elbows and hands.

Ouch! That’s a lot of hickeys.

It rains a lot there, or maybe just when we were there, us peons had to walk through this w/plastic bags around our shoes to get to set, but Mr.Carradine had a car deliver him so he wouldn’t get dirty (Bill’s a very nice guy, I won’t bag on him, I’m just jealous).

BURN BABY BURN! A scene which required some fire action! Where’s Dennis Leary when you need him?

Extras in China make about 30-50 yuan a day= less than $10. Usually film more than 12 hours a day. Another reason why more and more American crews are shooting films in Hengdian.

Ok. it’s 12:43am and I got to sleep now, got to wake up in a few hours to direct a theatre show in Berkeley, CA =/ goodnight ya’ll.

1kg More (多背一公斤）was four years old on April 18, 2008.

Happy Birthday, 1kg More! And congratulations on the great progress in the past year, Andrew!

I chatted with 1kg More founder/blogger/travel enthusiast Andrew Yu (my previous interview with Andrew is here) a few days ago and got the latest updates on 1kg More:

1. 1kg More is in Shanghai taxis: If you are taking any taxi that is running Touch Media, who recently announced to receive RBM 1000 million VC funding on Mar. 28, 2008, advertising, you will see 1kg on the screen. As I know, Touch Media is currently running in Qiang Sheng Taxi (强生出租车, the brown/deep yellow color cab).

2. 1kg More has a new website: With this new version, a user now can:

• Search schools that need help by typing in the destination name .(I gave a try and found 10 schools in Guilin (桂林) area, and 26 schools in Lijiang Yuman (云南丽江) area, very nice!)
• Upload the school information online. 1kg volunteers will then contact the school to make sure the information are accurate.
• Share photos with other members.
• Join any other 1kg activities.

Volunteer Suave Su is using various open-sourced technologies to build the website, and the 1kg.org site is open to any volunteers to contribute. You can email Suave (suave.su at gmail.com) if you want to help. It is not a rocket-science project, but I am very impressed by what Suave has done by himself.

3. 1kg More has more schools: In the past 3 months in 2008, there are 120+ added into the search-able database (the number for the year 2007 is 98).

4. 1kg More is now a registered entity: As a grassroots NGO in China, Andrew told me it is impossible for 1kg More to get a non-profit organization registration. And the only way to have a legitimated identity is to register 1kg as a commercial entity. Andrew and I have chatted about this before, and the reality is that there is hardly a way for a grassroots NGO to get an official recognition from the government at present due to a serial complicated concerns. I am looking forward to 1kg More’s Chinese characterized NGO model.

Read 1kg More annual summary from Andrew Yu in Chinese here.