Travel

Australia-China Friendship Society Screening

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Screening in Melbourne

On Friday morning, we got on an airplane from Sydney to Melbourne. The flight was a little over an hour long, and it reminded me of the trip from San Diego to the Bay Area. Upon arriving, we noticed a number of people wearing black and white striped outfits. At the time of this post’s writing, the Grand Final game for Australia Rules Football is happening right now just a mile away in the Melbourne Cricket Ground Stadium. Earlier today, we walked to the stadium and waded through the throngs of Magpie and Saints fans who are now eagerly cheering for their respective teams. If the Chargers ever made it back to the Super Bowl, would I be so enthusiastically dressed in blue and gold? You bet!

The previous evening, we had a screening that was sponsored by the Australia-China Friendship Society and the Confucius Institute. The film was shown at the Carrillo Gantner Theatre in the Sidney Myer Asia Centre at the University of Melbourne. The venue had a great projector system which showed the film in glorious HD. There was also an Elmo overhead projector, which I used to demonstrate our Autumn Gem Preview application for the iPad.

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University of Sydney Screening

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University of Sydney Screening

Following our morning excursions to the Sydney Opera House and Bondi Beach, we went to the University of Sydney for our evening show. The screening, sponsored by the Confucius Institute and the China Education Centre, was held at the Education Building in Lecture Theatre 351 at 6:30pm. They brought a nice-sized turnout to the screening, with about 60-70 people in attendance. Uncle Clement brought some of his colleagues, and a classmate of my father’s was also at the screening. It’s been great to travel around the world meeting people who have some connection to our parents or to Qiu Jin. We certainly didn’t expect this when we started the project!

It was also nice to meet Sue Wiles, an independent scholar who wrote her thesis on Qiu Jin. Her paper questioned whether or not Qiu Jin was more of a feminist or patriot. Wiles felt Qiu Jin leaned more towards the nationalist side. In China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, Qiu Jin is definitely know more for her patriotic and nationalist efforts. With Autumn Gem, we present both sides of the argument, and we let the viewer decide for themselves. This is probably why her story is so interesting — there is no clear cut answer!

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Bondi Beach

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Bondi Beach

Following our short visit to the Sydney Opera House, my uncle took us to lunch over at Bondi Beach. Located 7km from the city center, Bondi Beach is a very popular beach that reminded me of beaches in La Jolla where I grew up. I don’t think I ever appreciated how amazing La Jolla was until I came back to San Diego during my college summers. Seeing the Pacific Ocean open up as one exits Highway 52 is a lovely and amazing sight. I do wonder what it would be like to live in one of those houses just on the waterfront. Would I become desensitized to the view over time or would I remain captivated everyday with the brilliant blue sea?

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Sydney Opera House

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Sydney Opera House

Before our screening at the University of Sydney, we spent a few hours in the morning and afternoon doing some sightseeing. At the Sydney Opera House, we had a good view of people climbing up the Harbor Bridge. That might be a fun thing to do when we are back in Sydney next weekend. The Opera House was as striking up close and personal as it was in the photographs and videos I had seen of it prior.

The city of Sydney was very beautiful and very racially diverse. In many ways, Sydney and Melbourne remind us of the San Francisco Bay Area where we are from. The ocean’s right there, and nature is just a short drive away from the city centers. Great food from nations across the globe are present too. We could certainly see ourselves living in Sydney — or at least visiting it again!

Check out some photos we took of the Sydney Opera House.

University of New South Wales Screening

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Rae at the University of New South Wales

We had a screening at the University of New South Wales yesterday afternoon. Thanks to Professor Haiqing Yu who set up our first screening of Autumn Gem on international soil! We had mostly academics and professors at the screening, and this led to a very good discussion about how best to promote and distribute our film to educational markets. We’re beginning a big push to get Autumn Gem in 2011, namely because it’s the 100-year anniversary of the fall of the Qing Dynasty. We’re betting that many people will be wondering, “What was the role of women in the early 20th century?” We want the answer to be to watch Autumn Gem!

Before the trip, I was thinking about leaving the laptop at home and bringing just the iPad to run our Keynote presentation and present the movie. I’m glad that I didn’t, because I needed the MacBook Pro to interface with the projector in the Robert Webster Building. The resolution was locked to 1280 pixels wide, and I couldn’t find a way to change that from the projector control panel. The iPad’s VGA adapter outputs at 1024×768, so everything looked stretched on the screen. Switching to the laptop and setting the resolution to 1280×768 fixed things. The takeaway from all of this? Always bring a backup!

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Arrival in Sydney

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The flight from SFO to Sydney took fourteen hours. For me, that time went by quickly enough, since I was asleep for eight of those hours. Rae didn’t not fare as well, but she has been able to rest at our lodging for the evening. We’ll be heading out to the University of New South Wales in a few hours, as we have a screening today at 4:30 pm. And so begins our first international tour of Autumn Gem! We have eight screenings in thirteen days in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.

Australia Gear Packing List

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We’re just a few hours away from flying off for our first international tour of Autumn Gem! This evening we’ll be taking to the skies to head Down Under for eight screenings of Autumn Gem in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, Australia.

With a new trip comes new gear for travel! We’ve learned a lot from our two previous tours to the Midwest, East Coast and Southwest. Our current goal is to be able to bring one carry-on bag that can fit under the airplane seat! With that in mind, I’ve adjusted our gear list with the following new additions. Here’s a photo of mostly what I’m taking with me on the trip.

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Autumn Gem Screening Map

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I spent the evening adding markers to a Google Map showing all the places where Autumn Gem has and will be screened. Our Summer and Fall 2010 tour schedule will be taking us to Australia, Texas, Vancouver, and Southern California! It’s amazing that in the past year and a half, we’ve shown Autumn Gem in over fifty places across the country!

We will continually update this map as the film makes its way to more and more places around the globe!

Stony Brook University Screening Recap

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Stony Brook University screening of Autumn Gem

The Spring 2010 Autumn Gem Tour featured 13 screenings in 18 days. Our final stop before returning to the Bay Area was at State University of New York at Stony Brook on Long Island. Saying goodbye to my relatives in New Jersey, we took an early morning train to New York’s Penn Station. We didn’t head immediately to Long Island, as I had to make a quick jaunt over to the All Things Digital “East Coast Office” in Midtown. The differences between the two cities of Boston and New York were readily apparent as we walked between the towering skyscrapers. Boston had more of an old-time colonial and working class feel to it, whereas New York had a more hustle and bustle, white-collar feel. I can understand how intense a rivalry can develop between these two cities (esp. in sports); the variations here are more apparent than those between Northern California and Southern California cities.

We spent just an hour inside the News Corp. building before leaving to return back to Penn Station for our Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) train ride. I didn’t realize the News Corp. building had a subway stop in the basement — convenient! I’m very fortunate that I’m able to work remotely while on tour. We couldn’t have produced Autumn Gem without having the flexibility to work virtually anywhere, be it in China, Las Vegas or the East Coast. My motto is “Have Internet, will travel!”

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Brookdale Community College Screening Recap

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Brookdale Community College

The previous day’s double feature, coupled with the lengthy and hectic travel to get to New Jersey, left us pretty tired. But, we were now on the home stretch and nothing would get in the way of our completing this tour! Fortunately, the next screening at Brookdale Community College was extremely well organized. Linda Wang and her students in the Brookdale Asia Society were very proactive in getting the word out to students and the outside community. We also got great publicity from the World Journal and from my uncle’s friends and colleagues. As a result of their efforts, we saw a large crowd of about 120-130 people at the screening. Asia Society even brought a popcorn maker, which brought an authentic movie viewing experience to the evening!

The night kicked off with an overview of Chinese history during the time of Qiu Jin by Michelle, a member of Brookdale Asia Society. This helped set the stage for our film, which was shown on dual projector screens in the room.

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