Rigging In China

So i thought i would do a short post out there for all my rigging friends in theatre. It seems that securing/rigging things over here in China are just a little bit different. As we loaded out of Harbin, half the the locals decided to take down there own scenery which included a lot of hung set pieces. When they came in, i just had to take some pictures of how they were rigged up. All of this would def. be declared unsafe in the states.

And further more as we were packing up our sea containers (which is how our gear travels from venue to venue) we noticed how they were securing the containers to travel about 1200 miles!!! With bailing wire!!! The wire was no thicker than that of a coat hanger, and here they are trying to secure 100 tons of equipment with it. If you aren't scared yet, you should be!!!

Last but not least (and having nothing to do with rigging) here is a picture of the stage floor in Harbin. This was the part of the floor we had to roll one of our set pieces on and off our show deck into the show. The scraps on the floor are about 2 feet wide and a foot long. They are no deeper than a pen point and what did the theatre manager do? We got a bill for $5000.00 US dollars!!!!

Lets marinate on that for a minute. The Yuan in China is worth almost 1/7 the amount of the US dollar. And how did they come to this figure. They said the floor was originally built for a million dollars. And we scratched up .002 percent of the floor. NOW, that is retarded.

White is In

I have been very interested lately at all the women walking around with umbrella's and parasols. I understand the point in carrying around one when the weather is hot and to avoid the sun for long period's of time, but I started to notice them everywhere, especially on our last trip to ironically "Sun Island".




So i decided to ask Jake's fiance April (who is born and raised in mainland China) why they are so popular. First off she told me that they are protecting themselves against skin cancer. And I told her that you probably won't get skin cancer if you are spending less than an hour in the sun a day. She seemed confused and said "really". And i said i was pretty sure.




However, she also told me that Chinese women are very careful not to spend any time in the sun. Many of them desire to be as white as possible. I also noticed that men really don't care about the sun, most go around without shirts in the summer. As for women, she said that they want to stay as white as possible and some even go through bleaching processes to make them whiter.



Who knew. as for the western world it seems most people aim to be darker and tan as often as possible. But not in China.

PS. This women grabbed me and had to have my picture taken with her. Told ya, I am an outright celebrity. Or maybe i am just fat!

Siberian Tiger Video's

Below in the first video is the flying chicken we bought for 20 dollars.

Below, in the 2nd video is the duck bought for $8 dollars. There is a good bit of build up to this one and you see quite a bit of the tigers playing on the side, before they throw the duck in. Listen to the tigers, right after the duck is caught, and you will hear how loud the tigers roar to fend off other tigers after they have caught there prey.

Below, video 3, you will see a chicken tied onto a stick and fed to a tiger. It is held up in a tree and literally within a second the tiger climbs about 10 feet up the tree and grabs the chicken.

Siberian Tiger Preserve

Heading out of Harbin.

A really cool bush sculpture.

On Friday since we didn't have to be at the theatre till 5pm, we planed a trip to the Harbin Siberian Tiger Preserve. We were all very excited to go and experience a natural habitat for these tigers.

As a preface to this, had I have known that the preserve was actually kinda like a zoo i might not have gone. I don't like zoo's in the states! None the less, there was a good bit of grounds that the tigers could roam. However, the cages that were on the grounds were quite small. (Even though we only saw about 10 tigers in those cages.)

So we all boarded onto a bus at 9am and headed off to the preserve. On our arrival we boarded into a medium size bus and headed out into the gated off areas of the preserve. At first the driver made us keep the sliding windows closed, and with no air conditioning we all started to rebel. Lets think about this. You are driving through an area filled with tigers and they tell you to close the glass windows. Does anyone see a problem here? Hmm, false security maybe? So within 5 Min's we had opened up the windows and spitting distance from the tigers.

I cannot even begin to tell you the fear that ensues when you are 3-10 feet away from these animals. They are amazing and deserve alot of respect. Even at 10 feet away, when a tiger "purrrrs" you feel it deep in your body. It is an intense feeling. Below, this guy was NOT happy to see us.

We drove thru gate after gate... through young adults, to breeding adults, to mature adults, into the liger zone. And PAUSE.

LIGERS EXIST!!!!!!!!! Ligers. 1 lion + 1 tiger= liger . I had NO freakin' idea!!!

End pause. So we traveled all over the grounds looking for tigers, and it was very amazing. What wasn't amazing was that our wonderful driver had ZERO respect for the tigers. He drove like a bat out of hell. We were in caravan with another bus, and the entire time the 2 drivers honked there horn at each other to either speed up or get out of the others way. I mean it was just silly. You would think they would have had some consideration for the tiger's surroundings.

At any case, it was amazing. After our driving trip through the grounds, they had a huge caged walking structure that you could walk over another tiger area. And the highlight of this part, was that you could feed a live cow($150), goat($60), chicken($8), duck($8), or flying duck($20) to the tigers. (If you go on You Tube and enter "Siberian Tiger Feeding" you can see the goat)

Now i know what you are thinking and no we did not feed a cow or goat to the tigers. I do have to say that it felt very primeval and gladiator-Esq. Believe me, there were many of thoughts raised regarding this matter. (In this photo, i was inch's away from this tigers paws.)

1. The animal has to eat, and technically it is survive of the fittest and the tiger is at the top of the food chain.

2. It is a zoo, so this animal could easily be eating grain products.

3. Zoo's around the world will feed live animals to help keep animals like tigers in top condition and use to hunting in the wild (IE. if they are ever released back into the wild).

4. What about the duck, the duck has the right to live to.

5. The least they could do is serve dead animals to the tigers, thus eliminating the torture of the duck.

6. Our token vegetarian wanted to thus throw one of us "horrible meat eating humans" in and see what happens.

And on and on and on.

Alas, we chose to buy 1 chicken and 2 ducks to feed to the tigers. Cause after all, it made for some good photography. I WILL UPLOAD THE 3 Video's IN MY NEXT BLOG, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO WATCH THEM. They really aren't that bad. (Below- I think i love this photo the best. These 2 tigers played with each other for almost 20 Min's while we were there watching. Just so cool to see in person.)

To conclude our trip to the preserve, we then were able to take pictures with a baby Siberian Tiger. (Cost was about 6 bucks)

And that was my day at the Tiger park.

1st Video!

ALRIGHT, now i am excited!!! I have just uploaded my first video. It is a little long but give you a pretty good idea of what a typical cab ride is like. We are traveling at night back to our hotel and it is about 15 mins. Enjoy and i promise my next video will be more exciting.

McDonald's

Just a quick picture blog of Mc D's. I wanted to put up a few photo's of what it looks like. I took a photo so you can see it looks exactly what it does in the states. As expressed, the only difference is that they have disgusting chicken nugget sauces which is why i brought my own from the states and they serve corn!!! Corn!I think the kid on the slide is adorable. The first kid i tried to take a picture of started crying and refused to come down the slide. His mom had to come get him. (Sorry kid)

PS. I hate McDonald's in the states!!! It is kinda bearable here.

Welcome to the North

Just in case you ever come to Harbin, here is a little tid bit to know. The sun rises at 3:15 am! So if you plan on sleeping much past 3am, you might want to close your blinds. What was I thinking, it is next to Russia and Mongolia.

The last few days we have spent loading in our show and surprisingly the locals here are very good. They are from a local theatre company and actually have some knowledge of how to load in a show. AMAZING. Unfortunately, the loading dock in the theatre is a set of stairs... so that took a while to pull crates up. Above, you can see our translators for Harbin. The picture was taken at 9am, because we were still waiting for the 1st thing to be unloaded an hour into load in (loadins usually start at 8). The picture pretty much shows you what we deal with to have things translated, including high heels, purse, and all. Here is how my first conversation with my translator goes:

Me: Hello I am Doc. You are going to be following me around alot today and we will put in the show. Have you ever done theatre?
Trans: No
Me: If you would like i can put your purse in a safe place, and then you won't have to carry it.
Trans: No, i will just carry it. I might need it later.
Me: Ok, well we will do alot of walking around. Let me fill you in on some helpful terms. Stage left, upstage, fly system.....
Trans: fly what?!
(it isn't that bad, but it is funny)

Harbin has a very famous music festival. We really didn't see any part of it, but we were the closing attraction to it. One night when we went out to the local street walk, we saw the symphony playing.

As the closing night to the music festival, the theatre decided to bump up security for our show. It was kinda funny. They set up metal detectors to get into the theatre, the had bomb detectors, bomb dogs that walked all over our set for over an hour, many government officials, and these guys (see next picture) that sat backstage during the show...We really have no idea what they were doing, but they sat there with fire extinguishers i guess in case there was a fire.

Soon enough we decided we need to take a picture with them. And they were so bored, they agreed.

One night on tour, we all decided to go out to this American style country/western bar one of the actors had found in a travel guide called "Arbucks". About 20 of us had gotten really excited for "western food" and were ready for a night of fun.

As you can imagine, it left alot to be desired. It did prove to be a good place to have a beer, but the food was horrible. And the themeing was in no way western. I order fries and chicken curry rice. This is what i got...

It was more like some tomatoes and spaghetti(no chicken at all). Needless to say, they couldn't even get the curry part right. At least i was able to have a few Corona's. I did however have to take a picture of the bathroom. It was filled with naked ugly chicks, pretty funny.

And PS. this is a "squatty" as we call it. If you ever here me wanting a real toilet this isn't it. Any time we come upon one of the these we A. stop breathing and B. RUN!!!!!!

I must say that in Harbin I am very much a celebrity. In one day's time i had my stomach rubbed 3 times. Just random China peeps walking up to me, rubbing my "Buddha" belly, and giving me a thumbs up. So i got kinda creative, and thus started rubbing there belly's back. And when they rub mine, i lift up my shirt and pat it. It's made for some fun times.


When we went out to the Sun Island one woman grabbed me and started taking pictures of me. And the best is at work. I have set up my work area upstage left and it seems the locals love to come around me and watch me work. They always check in with what i am doing, check out my computer, and stand literally inches away as i repair moving lights. (As noted in the picture below).
And finally for this post a picture of our fruit bar at breakfast. Some oranges, watermelon, and cherry tomatoes. Enjoy!!!