Before the job even started though, while taking my standard route into China (through Hong Kong), some businessmen on the plane saw me reading a Hong Kong newspaper and asked if I wanted to help them make a deal in southern China. Since I had arrived in China with plenty of time to spare, I decided to spend a few days with them, mostly in Dongguan, meeting company executives and touring factories, etc. It is a brave and difficult (and confusing) thing to go to China without someone who speaks the language and knows the country; I'm glad they found me at the last second.
Afterwards, I headed for Beijing, where I began working on yet another side project: finding a rural Beijing family for the book Hungry Planet, by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio. The Hungry Planet project involved visits to 30 families in 24 countries around the world, interviewing each family about their eating habits and taking a photo of them with all the food they eat in a week. Amazing book, packed with text, photos, and statistics, all of which will blow your mind. It's like a Material World of food.
I found the family through a friend in Beijing, and arranged for us (the photographer, Peter [my step-dad], the writer, Faith [mom], and the interpreter, me) to interview and photograph them after completing the main task at hand. (You can see more about our work with the Hungry Planet family, including pictures, here. You can see some photos taken in rural Beijing before I found the family here.)
Our primary job was for Proctor and Gamble. They needed some promotional materials representing their company's presence in China, so we spent about two weeks focused on these three objectives:
Their primary product lines in China revolve around hair and skin care, something I'm not really into; but, after all it is China, and I can get into just about anything as long as it's China or Chinese. Switching tasks almost daily and working out the logistics of it all was certainly enjoyable.
Two months later in October, I had an urge to return to China's interior and do some exploring. (I sometimes feel like doing some serious hiking, and western China is definitely not lacking good places to hike.) Concidentally, my high school friend Shu-ling happened to be in China at the time, and wanted to tag along. She flew from Qingdao; I took a 42-hour train from Guangzhou to Chengdu to meet her at the airport.
For a little asian girl, she was a real sport, and it's amazing she was able to keep up through all the rain, mud, snow, elevation, and bad living conditions we encountered (although personally, that's where most of the fun is). Good job, Shu-ling. In ten days time, we visited about ten locations in Sichuan Province: various sights in Chengdu, Emei Mtn., Leshan, Jiajiang, Jiuzhaigou, Chuanzhusi, Songpan, Four Girls Mtn., Qiang minority forts in central Sichuan, etc... Pictures and stories here.
After our travels were complete, I lived in Chengdu for a few weeks while I did a lot of reading and research for my various personal projects. I absolutely LOVE Sichuan's wontons in red oil (¬õªo§Û¤â)... so I may as well research in a place where I can enjoy them every single day, right? (Better yet, there was a small restaurant specializing in them right behind the hotel.)
[17 jun 05]