Travel

On Route to Shaoxing

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We’re on route to Shaoxing, where Qiu Jin’s former residence and school reside. We arrived in Shanghai in the late morning. The taxi drivers are crazy! Ours was weavng in and out of traffic at high speed, sometimes making three lanes where there were only two! After settling into our hotel, we walked around the area near our hotel on Pujian Road. In the evening, we met up with my cousin King-Jung and Rae’s former co-worker, Sid, going to Raffles City for dinner.

Our driver is arriving any minute now to take us to a film equipment rental house so we can load up on lights, stands, and modifiers for our shooting this week.

Arrived in Hong Kong

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JP relaxes with his neck pillow and eye-mask.

We just landed at Hong Kong International Airport and are waiting in baggage claim. The flight was safe and uneventful — just a little long at 16 hours. We watched several movie during the flight, including Minority Report, My Lucky Star, and Rescue Dawn. For the last movie, we watched in on my MacBook Pro using the new iTunes Movie Rentals feature from Apple. Once we get our film done, we’d love to get it distributed via iTunes!

Upon our arrival and exit from baggage claim, we were greeted by my parents and Rae’s parents, who took United to fly to Hong Kong. We took a 30-minute ride to our hotel for the next few days, the Royal Plaza Hotel.

Right now, it’s 10:44 pm our time, around 6:45 am back home in Santa Clara. Tomorrow, my cousin Peter is getting married to Zelda. We’ll be partaking in the wedding festivities for much of the day. We’ll take the next few days to get acclimated to the surroundings, recover from jet lag, and prepare for the meat of the trip, starting the 27th when we fly to Shanghai.

Check out photos from our flight to Hong Kong today!

China in T-Minus 12 Hours!

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Inside the Pelican 1510 case

We’re less than 12 hours away from boarding a Cathay Pacific Airways plane for Hong Kong! Over the next three weeks, our team of five people will be traveling and filming scenes from The Qiu Jin Project. Rae and I are excited to kick off principal photography for the documentary.

Here are some photos of what we’re bringing. Most of our photo and video equipment is contained in the Pelican 1510 case. The 1510 can be carried onto an airplane. It’s got our video camera, digital still camera, lenses, and accessories. It’s good that it’s relatively small (compared to this huge Pelican case I also own) because it forces me to bring only the essential equipment. The large gray bag contains my clothes, audio XLR cables, and my tripod. We’re bringing a small Gitzo 1128 tripod for photo and light video work. When we arrive in Shanghai next week, we’ll rent a heavier tripod for our video work. Finally, the laptop bag contains our MacBook Pro, which we’ll be using to download footage, process images, and stay in touch with the world.