12.00am: finish vigin coconut milk milkshake
1.00am: hug disney alex and teipei chris goodbye and thank them for making a special effort entertaining
1.30am: arrive back at hotel room. begin packing, create dvd for shane, slide onedotzero print work on to pocket drive. bin unnecessary junk from room, count money
3.10: shower, wash, drink water
3.15am: get into bed
4am(ish): fall asleep
8:15am: shane calls to see if i want breakfast with himself an noah. i want to stay where i am. they've not been to bed.
9.45am: drag myself out of bed. shower, dress, brush teeth, pack remaining cabin luggage. put new batteries in digital camera
10.10am: walk the half mile to tiananmen square passing imperial village in baking humidity. shower is rendered a waste of time withing twenty strides. local chines keep saying 'hello' and nothing else. i say hello back, trying to use as little energy as possible



10.25am: arrive at imperial village and take pictures



10.40am: cross road to tiananmen square, try to buy kite for my mother but realise i left my money on the hotel room table after counting it. take picture of me cross-legged sitting on the floor staring at the huge chairman mao portrait opposite.





11.00am: arrive back at room 5111.
11:15am: shane arrives in beijing grand hotel room 5111 for dvd and pocket drive transfer of onedotzero assets
11:30am: meet colin, british council driver, noah and shane already in audi a6 with diplomatic plates. we leave the hotel car park, shane gets his passport out and we do a u-turn so i can collect mine from the hotel room safe. close. very close.
11.50am: we play the uhu (unnecessary horn usage) game one last time. noah predicts 30 horn blasts on the way to the airport. shane picks 31. instead of picking any i just laugh tiredly.



1.00pm: arrive at peking international airport. shane says goodbye and catches flight to sydney. colin, noah and myself sort out our tickets and say goodbye to each other. buy fanta (35 rmb) and find departure lounge.



2:10pm: sk996 boarding starts
3.15pm: sk996 beijing-copenhagen leaves the tarmac flying over siberian, st petersburg and stockholm. i read 100 pages of harry potter and the chamber of secrets, watch starsky and hutch, wilt with my eyes closed over the free seat to my left, play ssx3 on gameboy advance, listen to an eminem compilation disc i made before coming and begin to write this.



5.50pm (copenhagen time): sk996 lands copenhagen international airport.



7.50pm: flight sk1501 copenhagen-london boards, 20 minutes late.
8.30 pm: sk1501 copenhagen-london leaves tarmac and we chase dusk across europe.

9.20pm: (london time) sk1501 lands london heathrow.





9.45pm: baggage claim. a new record
10.10pm: on tube
11.05pm: i get up ready for the tube to pull into my station. it stops. i sit back down again thinking, 'typical london - welcome back to all this shit!'
11.35pm: my front door opens. i hug laura.
11.50pm: sit on sofa and stare vacantly, too tired to sleep. 'i can't believe that i was in tiananmen square this morning taking pictures of kites...' i say, lost in the dreamy tiredness of exhaustion.

motion capture studio bfa with ex-saint martins classmates, albelt seven years' difference.
cafa
noah: 'i'm going to start this presentation by taking a picture of you...'

Presentations at Central Academy of Fine Art (CAFA) and Beijing Film Academy (BFA). Colin to act as interpreter for both sessions.
09:00 Colin to pick up Shane, Noah, and Mark from hotel lobby
09:30-09:55 Arrive at CAFA, check set-up.
10:00-12:00 Presentations at the CAFA
10:00-11:20 Presentations by Shane, Noah, and Mark
11:20-11:40 Presentation by Ma Gang, Head of New Media Department, on the state of Chinese new media education and creativity.
11:40-12:00 Q&A, discussion.
Breakdown of participants:
300 people-400 people in total
80% art students [40% fine arts students, 30% new media or mix media art students]
10% teachers
10% artists live near the CAFA from 798 or Wangjing
12:00-13:00 Lunch at CAFA
13:00-13:30 Travel to BFA
13:30-13:55 Check set up
14:00-16:00 Presentations at the BFA
14:00-15:20 Presentations by Shane, Noah, and Mark
15:20-15:40 Presentation by Zhang Xianmin, lecturer at BFA, film festival curator and film director
15:40-16:00 Q&A, discussion.
Evening (tbc) Dinner with staff from CAFA and BFa. duck jaws, anyone?

on the way to cafa



supermarket







cafa





sunday 13th june
Presentations at the Today Gallery. Breakdown of participants:
50-60 professionals of advertising industry, visual artists, film makers, and web or new media companies.
15:00-15:30 Presentations by Shane
15:30-16:00 Presentation by Noah
16:00-16:30 Presentation by Mark
16:30-17:00 Presentation by Danam
17:00-17:30 Presentation by 8gg
17:30-18:00 Discussion
19:30-late (optional) Dinner with Clare Wise and Chinese film directors
09:30-14:00 Screenings
14:00-15:00 Q&A session by Shane, Mark, and Noah
15:00-18:00 Presentations by artists. All presentations include 5-10 mins for Q&A.













saturday 12th june
opening ceremony of bfi tour and odz_beijing. i stand, bow, then wave and i'm done.

14:30 Noah and Mark arrive at Today Gallery
15:00-17:00 onedotzero opening ceremony

friday 11th june
i sleep in late, and go shopping for an hour with sophie in the local street market, every second counting. noah arrives a day late and on his birthday as we meet him in the lobby. 'here /by these seats / if we get split up...' etc. champagne time opening at the first british film festival. ever. in china, the buffet dinner including sculpted mango sharks of all things. and among others us being filmed a lot because we were british. (first time ever?!)

the hyatt for drinks in the evening followed by champagne flutes. noah turns 30 in style.go on, son!





wednesday 9th june thursday 10th june
up at ten, slow final semi-panics, packs and checks and bags. turnpike lane, heathrow. she was right; an hour and half is better than an hour and twenty. the planes had slogans on. like a horoscope only travel-specific.





then we were in copenhagen. i should have looked it up on the map. i didn't know where in the world i was, but guessed denmark? probably the most lavish airport flooring in the world.



two hours later up again. this is the one i've been dreading.



i could feel it coming and watch it on tv. itchy to move and way past tired, landing in beijing. who would have thought it a even a month ago?



a word of advice, if taxi driver 051103 picks you up say 'che che' but no. the cooler his aircon blows the fewer gears he could use. seriosuly, i'd just stopped gasping for air when only first was accessible. and it's a 45 minute journey at 80. good start then.



then i got to the hotel, with it's gold taps, broadband and hand-stuffed mattress. with a pretty good view for a fifth floor... i was 511...1 and shane was 911...1, appropriately enough. noah turned out to be 811...1

i showed the plane off and got a couple of hours' sleep which came surprisingly easily. shane collected me and off we wenet to nuage on the lake with some onedotzero_beijing crew. as the rmb1.60 taxi stopped at a red light i couldn't help looking at the two playing badminton (badly) outside the bank. the street was buzzing as people did their after-work stuff. it seemed like japan without the tokyo and speed and money.



so here's what i was given from the british council:
'time difference: + 8 hours, language: mandarin, tel code: 010, area: 750 beijing: sq km, population: 13 million.

if your visions of beijing are centred around pods of maoist revolutionaries in buttoned-down tunics performing t'ai chi in the square, put them to rest: this city has embarked on a new-millennium roller-coaster and it's taking the rest of china with it.

today's youth are more interested in mtv than mao; rhetorical slogans from the cultural revolution have given way to butchered english splashed across designer-copy t-shirts; and expats, tourists, foreign investors and a mobile phone-toting hip-oisie are mixing it up with the bureaucrats.
old hutongs (alleys) and buildings are being demolished, new buildings are going up, small things are giving way to big things and big things are giving way to even bigger things. this fast-paced, two-minute-noodles lifestyle doesn't please everyone - the old comrades are complaining about uppity youths and loss of values - but the capital of the people's republic of china doesn't look like it's slowing down any time soon.
orientation

beijing is located in the northeastern corner of china. the city limits of beijing extend some 80km (50mi), including the urban and the suburban areas and the nine counties under its administration - in other words, it's huge. though it may not appear so in the shambles of arrival, beijing is a place of very orderly design. long, straight boulevards and avenues are crisscrossed by a network of lanes. places of interest are either very easy to find if they're on the avenues, or impossible to find if they're buried down the hutongs (narrow alleys).

the forbidden city acts like a bull's-eye, surrounded by a chessboard of roads, including five ring roads which circle the city centre in concentric circles. the first ring rd is a mapmaker's fiction and just part of the grid around the forbidden city. however, the second, third, fourth and fifth (opened in 2002) are multi-lane freeways. roughly within the second ring rd are the four central districts: xicheng, dongcheng, chongwen and xuanwu. outside the second ring rd, the so-called 'suburban' (now urbanised) districts are chaoyang (east), fengtai (southwest), haidian northwest) and shijingshan (central-west).'


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