March 31

The day started kind of slow-then caught up as usual. 

We went to a walking mall on the way to an interview with a journalist living in Beijing and working for Al Jazeera English.  Very insightful.  

Next, we visited the Green Tea House, called a combination of Chinese Culture and Alice and Wonderland, on our way to dinner at the Belagio restaurant.

March 30

We didn't move far from our own Hutong to finish filming the local block of music stores- many of the shops not only demonstrated their wares but gave us the history of the instruments, as well. 

Our next stop was the park outside of the Forbidden City, this hill was created from the excavation that created the lakes around the area.  For something like 25 cents, we encountered a wealth of performance.  Walking a few feet would bring you to a large choral ensemble singing old war songs-walking a little farther and you see Hip Hop dancing grannies. Various traditional instruments we saw hanging in the stores were brought to life by people of all ages.  Mixed among the opera and hacky-sackers, was a real, old fashioned political debate. 

We kept climbing until we got to the temple, inside you could see a huge cast Buddha and outside you could see a great view of the Forbidden City.

As if that weren't enough, we all piled in a Taxi in time to meet a Phd student studying energy use, for an interview on his campus.

March 29

We found ourselves in the art community near the 798 District, in the studio complex redesigned by Ligang. He opened the doors to one of his galleries, first, before showing us around his private workspace. His interview gave an interesting perspective. His generosity extended to introducing us to the neighboring artists.

Next, we returned to the 798 Red Gate location for an interview with Reg Newitt, the manager there.

March 28

A rainy, cold, cold day. We started off with a very successful interview with Green Peace China, they wanted an advance copy our questions, which seemed like a bad sign, but they were very available and forthcoming during the talk.

The rest of the day we had pre-interview set up meetings, first with a member of Al Jazhera then with an artist named Dr. Laurens Tau. Both were very productive and informative.

March 27

I am having a hard time typing right now: But, we visited Beijing University today and then we went to see a Acrobatics show.

March 26

At 5:00 am I woke up for whatever reason- so I took the time to back up our hard drive on the spare, after reformatting it which seemed to fix the bugs.

At 8:00 am we chartered a taxi for the day, which took us to what is reportedly the most beautiful part of the Great Wall, only 45 minutes away from Beijing I have to be skeptical, but it WAS amazing. We even got to slide down-can't wait to post that video.

After we got back we went to an historic tea house where many traditional chinese forms of entertainment kept us as engaged as the heads of state they have hosted in the past. Acrobatics, magicians, voice mimics, martial artists, and more were all a spectacle.

March 25

Were having a medium to large problem with our media storage- were officially out of tapes and our efforts to back up the hard drive keep resulting in error statements. The biggest issue is time because at an hour of hd video uncompressed is basically 30 gigs, multiply each filming hour to two cameras and logging tape takes forever...

Meanwhile, the 798 District was our first stop, THE RED GATE GALLERY's sister location allowed us to film before we visited THE GALLERIA CONTINUA where we got to see an installation by Michelangelo Pistoletto.

Our next stop was the Tea Street where there are over 600 tea shops within one mile.