June 10, 2008 Addendum to Lijiang Entry, Tamara's Story

I arrived back at our hotel well after dark only to hear Garry say, “You’re grounded.” A few minutes later Rich told me that I was grounded. Here’s what happened!

The late afternoon started off innocently enough as the three of us decided to walk up to the pagoda on the hill above Old Town Lijiang to view the city from a high vantage point. Contending with the maze of streets, we guessed at the direction to go. At one point, Garry and Rich decided to head one way and I told them it doesn’t seem right, so I headed a different way to the pagoda. After a few more twists and turns and asking a couple of people I found it, locked and unable to enter until 6:00pm. Waiting for a while, the guys still hadn’t arrive so I went to a nearby rooftop bar overlooking the city to wait for them to pass as they made their way up to the pagoda.

While sipping a Coca Cola Light and watching for the guys, I noticed a film crew setting up their equipment to film Old Town and the surrounding mountains. They were in one location, and then moved to a location closer to where I was sitting. I was fascinated, but I still had one eye on the street ready to yell at Garry and Rich as they passed.

As the film crew moved to its second location, I noticed one of the fellows had on a Penn State T-shirt with the Nittany Lion logo above the lettering. Hailing from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I got excited thinking there was a fellow Pennsylvanian in Lijiang. Excitedly, I rushed up to him and asked if he had gone to Penn State while pointing at his T-shirt. He looked startled and didn’t know what the heck I was talking about since he obviously didn’t know English.

I asked a man standing nearby if he knew English and replies he knew some. Explaining about the Penn State T-shirt he didn’t quite understand what I was talking about either. Oh, well. I questioned what they were filming and the answer was a tourism commercial to be shown throughout China.

One question led to another and then to yet another question. I discovered this man Zhao Tianyu had done an MTV segment and had written and directed a movie called “Deadly Delicious” which had a successful run in China’s theaters. He explained the plot and I asked more questions about his film.

At this point, I need to thank Dale Pollock for his great class “How to Watch a Movie” and some students at the North Carolina School of the Arts for filming at my condo. The information gleamed from these sources helped me ask intelligent questions.

As the crew finished at the rooftop bar, they moved to another location. The filmmaker asked if I wanted to join the crew as they made their way to the next place. It turned out to be the same temple or pagoda, from Garry’s, Rich’s and my original plan. I still had not seen the guys so I accepted the offer.

While walking to the next location, Tianyu asked me how long I was going to be in Lijiang. I told him we were leaving tomorrow at 9:00am for Tiger Leaping Gorge. “Are you sure you can’t change your plans?” he asked. “I’d like to shoot you having coffee in a café since I want to show a foreigner in China.” I asked if we could shoot by 9:00am, but his response was that it wasn’t possible since other locations were already chosen for an early morning shoot. Gosh, I missed my big chance, but still it was fun to be considered.

The guard opened the locked gate for us and the crew lugged all the equipment up to the fourth floor of the temple only to discover the location wasn’t acceptable. We returned down the flights of steps moving to another location overlooking the city for a nighttime shot.

We waited for nightfall to film the lights in Old Town. While waiting, Tianyu and I talked and two other guys joined us wanting to practice their English. This profession requires patience with lots of downtime just waiting for the right moment. It finally appeared it wasn’t going to work.

The crew again loaded up the equipment and headed down the hill to their hotel as I walked with my new acquaintances. After showing them a possible location to shoot Old Town’s lights that Garry, Rich and Richard discovered the night before, everyone said goodbye and I wished them well on all their future projects. I returned to the hotel only to be admonished for my tardiness. Actually, they were only kidding and knew I’d be coming back with a great story and I didn’t disappoint them.

After relating the entire evening to my traveling companions and telling them about the “Deadly Delicious” DVD being in the local shops, Richard and Rich went out in search of a copy. Eureka, they came back with one. We tried watching it on Garry’s computer, but we couldn’t get the English subtitles to work, if there were any.

It turned out there were two entrances to the pagoda and we didn’t know it until we attempted to figure out how we missed each other.

However, Garry and Rich one upped me – they had found a Magnum ice cream bar!

What a day to remember and thank goodness for synchronicities,

Tamara