I am fascinated by a book which I am reading since last week. This book is called China Road, a journey into the future of a rising power, from Rob Gifford. It is a nice journey along route 312, the Route 66 of China. He speaks Chinese, meet local people and gives his opinion about China's religion, politics and the fast developing economy.
His journey starts in Shanghai and while he is on the road heading to the west, he meets garrulous talk show hosts, tragic prostitutes, yuppies, drivers, peasants, AIDS patients and Tibetian monks. His book bring me now in Tibet, where he tells the stories of poor tibetans farmers and tibetans children who are trying to study Chinese very hard and pray for a better living for the future. The Chinese are on one mission in China: science and progress. Get them out of their "barbarian" way of living and throw their own civilization to them. "Revive the nation through science and technology"!
While he is on the road, Rob Gifford described the things he sees on the road. He finds the following propaganda on the roads: "one child less will save 3000-5000 yuan" or "speed up road construction. speed up the development of the west. There is no copper in roadside cables. Thieves will be severely punished"
Another interesting story is when he meets a prostitute and talks with her about the reason why she is doing the job she is doing. He expected a sad story how she had to leave school, because she didn't have money. Something like; I must do this or won't be able to eat! But then he says (quote of the book): "but there is a dangerous tendency for everything in modern China to be given an economic impetus, as though financial pressure is the only reason anyone ever does anything. We often fail to see that Chinese people are living, breathing, loving, hating individuals, who do things for complex psychological reasons, just like Westerners."

movie experience

Since buying dvd's in China is so cheap (5 to 10RMB), the movie theaters in Shanghai are not very packed. Also me, I never consider to go to the movies, even though I love the experience; sitting in a big sofa, big screen movie and 2 hours of total relaxation.
For Chinese new years, I received 2 free tickets from a supplier. This was a good reason to dig into the movie theaters again and see what is on the screen. After browsing on the websites, I understood why people are not going to the movies. Did you ever heard of the movie "Two Worlds"?? See the image below. Doesn't it look like a movie from the eighties, where we still want to find E.T. and E.T. wants to find his way back home?

Besides the fact that there is not a lot of good movies on the screen, the price is also not encouraging. This movie cost 60RMB-80RMB, 6-8 times as much as buying a DVD. Understandable that people will buy a dvd instead. After a good search, I finally found a movie which was worth to go: Valkyrie, with our one and only Dutch actress Carice van Houten. It was Friday night and about 10 people also had the same idea. So we had lots of space and not much of noise (very rare in China!). After the movie ended, I was still relaxed in my chair. Around me people were already up and queuing at the exit door, as if they were in a hurry. Even the "ayis" where inside the theater doing the cleaning. The movie just finished 5 seconds ago!! After I was kicked out of my chair I was wondering if I will ever go back to the movie theaters again in China.