Friday, December 16, 2005

Streaking on the Great Wall


If you've ever thought about streaking on the Great Wall, you can see here how its done. In the middle of winter too, and believe me its damn cold in Beijing in winter.
Actually, just as an aside my stepsister just told me to put an apostrophe into previous sentence, and I've already uploaded some of these photos, she is really not distracted. Mind you they're her photos and she's already had a chance to laugh.
So last week Lisa arrived and the first couple of nights she and Jane went out on the town (Monday and Tuesday nights are happening here apparently). They met two guys, Greg and Jason, who just got off the set of Mission Impossible 3 - they had just finished 6 months filming and were having a week off to look around. So on Wednesday night they all got on the train for Beijing (soft sleeper, nice). They had a wild time, as you can see. The nude boy in the photo is Greg. The naked streaker took my sister Lisa to a massage parlour in Beijing, swearing it would be legit. It was all looking a bit dodgy when they turned up at an apartment with no signs, and double beds instead of massage tables. The mini towels (ie facewashers) didn't help the situation. Lisa was feeling dodgy and so searched through all the drawers while the massage lady was away. She found her evidence....condoms!! and so left immediately as it all got to be a bit too much.

There is a stack of shopping at the Great Wall, they all line up alone the entrances and you can buy all sorts of stuff. Actually its hard to get away from them. Jane was writing an article on earmuffs for one of her jobs and she went around Bejing and Shanghai for a few days taking pictures of people with earmuffs on. In Shanghai she had to bribe people to wear them because everyone's too cool for school here. The rabbit earmuffs you see her wearing she got in Alaska, but unfortunately she left them in a cab. Anyway Beijing all ended up in debauchery with hookahs and pashes.

On the way out to the train station they caught a cab without a meter, when they got there the driver upped the price they had agreed on to rip them off. They argued and finally agreed on 80RMB. They gave the driver a 100 to get 20 RMB change, but he wouldn't give them the change. he stood next to the car, lit up a cigarette and laughed at them, especially Jane who was trying to communicate her frustration in Chinese. So Jane took a different tack - she took the keys from the cab and waved them around in front of the driver. He knew he was trumped, so he laughed and gave them the 20RMB. I reckon Jane should have asked for 50.

Our new acting careers

The thing about being a westerner in Shanghai is you can get an acting job really easily. Jane has been doing the rounds with the casting agencies and has done a few TV commercial already. Her first job was for an exercise bike, and she had to say she lost 30 pounds in 4 weeks. They took before and after pictures. If you've ever seen my sister she's pretty skinny. She had to stick her stomach out for the before shot so it still wasn't good enough so they said they'd photo shop it. She did another ad for an exercise trampoline and she got some photos from that one so here they are (I have her reluctant permission to put these up!).


Anyway, stay tuned, Jane and I have a gig on New Year's Eve - she's playing Alice in Wonderland and I'm the Queen of Hearts at some advertising party. We're getting our costumes fitted this week.