The last couple of days I've been feeling the beginning of a cold -- and taking lots of fluids and ingesting vitamin C at every opportunity to stave it off.
Well, today after my bike ride atop the remaining traversable sections of the wall (which was even more fun in daylight than it was last night), this cold finally caught up with me. I spent the afternoon in bed resting, and have now gone to my happy place: the movies. I am waiting for what is sure to be a TERRIBLE flick titled "Prey" starring Peter Weller to begin. From the posters, the plot appears to be: White couple go on safari. Hungry lions attack. Couple escapes being eaten, unlike their African guides, and learns valuable lesson about the wildness of nature.
My first choice was what appears to be a revolutionary drama in China circa 1910, but I was not confident I'd follow those plot twists quite as readily sans English.
Awesome! The movie has started, and is dubbed into Chinese. So far my read of the plot appears on track, except that the couple brought their two kids along (a plucky ten year old boy and a preening, iPod-addicted teenage daughter) and the guide was a white, rough-and-tumble ex-pat who just sacrificed himself to save the family. (Gosh, those heroic Americans!) And the African would-be rescuers are poachers, naturally.
We might question the quality of China's pharmaceutical exports, but the two primary US exports I've encountered (fast food and bad entertainment) shouldn't have us strutting, either.
This is the third flick I've seen in China (if you include portions of that overdubbed Shirley Temple). The first -- to escape the oppressive humidity in Shanghai -- was a Chinese slapstick about, as best I could tell, getting ahead in business. Buster Keaton understood that words can often get in the way, and I suspect I enjoyed that movie at least as well as the Chinese-speaking audience who followed the dialogue.
Some notes about the movie-going experience here: the chairs are really comfy, although often covered with sunflower seed shells (a de rigeur snack throughout the places I've visited). A large portion of the audience arrived after the movie started (not that they can't catch up). The popcorn (a de rigeur snack for me) is sweet, covered in sugar like candy corn.
Well, today after my bike ride atop the remaining traversable sections of the wall (which was even more fun in daylight than it was last night), this cold finally caught up with me. I spent the afternoon in bed resting, and have now gone to my happy place: the movies. I am waiting for what is sure to be a TERRIBLE flick titled "Prey" starring Peter Weller to begin. From the posters, the plot appears to be: White couple go on safari. Hungry lions attack. Couple escapes being eaten, unlike their African guides, and learns valuable lesson about the wildness of nature.
My first choice was what appears to be a revolutionary drama in China circa 1910, but I was not confident I'd follow those plot twists quite as readily sans English.
Awesome! The movie has started, and is dubbed into Chinese. So far my read of the plot appears on track, except that the couple brought their two kids along (a plucky ten year old boy and a preening, iPod-addicted teenage daughter) and the guide was a white, rough-and-tumble ex-pat who just sacrificed himself to save the family. (Gosh, those heroic Americans!) And the African would-be rescuers are poachers, naturally.
We might question the quality of China's pharmaceutical exports, but the two primary US exports I've encountered (fast food and bad entertainment) shouldn't have us strutting, either.
This is the third flick I've seen in China (if you include portions of that overdubbed Shirley Temple). The first -- to escape the oppressive humidity in Shanghai -- was a Chinese slapstick about, as best I could tell, getting ahead in business. Buster Keaton understood that words can often get in the way, and I suspect I enjoyed that movie at least as well as the Chinese-speaking audience who followed the dialogue.
Some notes about the movie-going experience here: the chairs are really comfy, although often covered with sunflower seed shells (a de rigeur snack throughout the places I've visited). A large portion of the audience arrived after the movie started (not that they can't catch up). The popcorn (a de rigeur snack for me) is sweet, covered in sugar like candy corn.
Oh, and nigh-geriatric Peter Weller (RoboCop) and svelte, scantily-clad Bridgette Moynihan do not a believable couple make.
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