Backtracking

This post will be a bit of a chaotic one, where I will put the pictures others have told me to post, and some video I didn't have a chance to upload before today.


First of all, how about hundreds of teddy bears instead of a shedding tree?



Today is our last day in Shanghai, so a perfect day for looking back.

This is the game people were playing all over parks in Beijing. Tom bought a couple of them and we decided to give it a go. As you can see, it's not that easy (in other words we were rubbish at it).

In the meanwhile we've been practising and we did get a lot better at it. I will film another session tonight, before our very last show here in China, and then post it so you can see how much better we are now.


This video is the pancake Dave and I had last week in Beijing. We were in a shopping area and there were loads of tiny food shops. We went for the one with the biggest queue, and this is what we ended up eating. It was very good.

On Friday we went for lunch with the people from the theatre. As usual, an enormous amount of food appeared and we tried and failed to eat it all.

This is the beginning - when we thought there was too much food on the table. As time went by, more and more food came. It may not look like there was space for more, but somehow there was.



At the end of the meal, the people from the Dramatic Arts Centre gave us a glass sculpture with the name of the show in Chinese.



This is how we left it: lots of food left. We felt a bit better about it when we saw Ray (our Shanghai producer) put most of it in boxes to take back to his office.




Today I decided to go up in the Jinmao tower. The Mobergs had already been and were very impressed, so I wanted to see it for myself. Coming out of the subway station I was immediately overwhelmed by the monster towers all around. And the fact that a lot more are being built. They're getting ready for the World Expo in 2010, and I'm sure that by that time Shanghai will look even more futuristic.

This is the one I went up. The 88th floor, 340m high.



This picture has a slight reflection from the window, but other than that the haze is the Shanghai smog. Don't let them fool you buy calling it fog. It's not.


This one reminds me of one of my homes: Berlin's TV Tower is similar to this building.


The river and the boats.


These guys are clearly not afraid of heights. They were at 340m and going up.



From the 54th floor up this building is a hotel. Reception is on the 54th floor and the top rooms are on the 88th floor (which doesn't make sense because that's where the lookout platform is, but since they have different sets of lifts, it's hard to decide whose numbers are correct). I went up to two 88th floors and they were definitely at different heights.

Looking from the top down on reception (with nothing but a wooden balustrade to keep you from tumbling down), you can see all the floors in between floor 88 and 54). It's a dazzling sight.


So, last show tonight. China has been great: we've had good audiences and they all seemed to really enjoy the show. We met some fascinating people and saw some amazing things.
At the moment I'm quite curious to see whether our man Ray has managed to source the 70 football shuttlecocks (I looked it up on the internet and they're apparently called Jianzi) we asked him to get for us. If he has, he'll be the man of the day.