Been a crazy week, quick post. China is exactly what you would expect and then it isn't. With everything.

This was from a nice restaurant in a very popular tourist area of Beijing. In these areas, everything and everyone is English speaking friendly.

So the last time I went to the Beijing Zoo I was so horrified that I never thought I would go again. That was over 2 years ago and I figured things would have changed by now. They have, but I'm wondering whehter or not the change is due to it being Winter when I first went and now being much closer to Summer. The Beijing Zoo sports over 7000 animals and boasts pandas, penguins, a high tech aquarium as well.

The birds were okay this time around. The ones that were outside anyways. Here's a vulture, the best looking of the bunch. Most of them really do look like the cartoons.

Very cute sleeping monkey. Forgot to look at what type it was. Monkeys are always fun.

Like this guy. Super energetic, he was swinging all over the cage and was quite a delight to watch.

This was a little depressing. The habitat for the Chimpanzees and the Gorillas was easily one of the nicest of all the animals. There is but a slight chasm and fence separating them from the tourists. If you know anything about Chimps or Gorillas I'm pretty sure you would not doubt their ability to get out whenever they wanted. Most of the them did not move much, the Gorilla was sleeping in the shade. My roommate Darren suggested that they were under tranquilizers. But we did see one later on that was working the crowd while shaking a branch.

The big cats were all sleeping and looks a little thin but this giant one was quite cool.

This is a happy panda. Lying in a pile of bamboo while eating and playing with his food. Big and fuzzy in all the right colours. This was in the Panda room, the main attraction of the zoo.

Unfortunately they're not all like that. And even though you have to pay a premium to see the more exotic animals, it doesn't really show that they're taken care of too well or happy at all. The elephants never turned around, you could only see their backsides, the giraffe was eating the paint off its door, the rhino had its horn cut off. This panda was just very sad to see.

Beijing is city full of possibility and opportunity. You will find yourself doing things you never thought you would do and involved with work you never thought possible.

So it's the Strawberry Music Festival in Beijing where dozens of artists play on 6 stages set up on the outskirts of Beijing. It's a bit of trek out, we had to take the subway, then a bus, then a long walk to get here. Just over an hour to get to and then the line up which was incredibly long. They had some awful organization problems and we heard that there were a few hundred people that didn't get in because they ran out of change. Ticket was 80rmb, everyone brough 100rmb and so that was that. China's getting there but still a long way to go.

There were so many people, all types of music from the heavy metal stage to the electronic stage to the.. not quite sure what to call it but it was definitely the hippie stage ("love stage"), a few others and the main stage called the Strawbery stage. Nothing really strawberry about it except the name of the festival and there were some strawberry themed tents around the grounds, but only a few.

My friend Nina from the UK dragged me out for my first concert for these guys. Most of the bands were Chinese that we've never heard of or could read the names of. And so when the band "Does it Offend You, Yeah?" was on the billing, Nina went a little nuts as she would never have expected a band of this sorts from England to ever play here. They were very good, entertaining, working what little Mandarin they picked up prior to going on stage, and played some electronic rock that the crowd went crazy for. I was in my first mosh pit ever which wasn't so bad but I did feel bad for this one guy at the edge of the mosh pit that got his glasses knocked off and squashed. If you wear glasses and ever had to go any length of time without them you know the pain (real prescriptions, people). In the middle of several thousand people doesn't make it any better.

Lost several friends during the course of the concert and found them after some searching. We made our way to the front right at the fence at the stage, so it wasn't too hard to find. At the point we listened to several Chinese bands, waited in line for everything it seems, the festival also ran out of alcohol before it really got started, at about 5pm there was only one tent that was serving any and my friends had a great time waiting in line while I watched the sun's shadow move several meters across the pavement. It was a beautiful day, the hottest of the year so far and new friends were made with sunblock.

After the concert we went backstage and hung out with some of the bands. The "Does it Offend You, Yeah?" guys were pretty cool and the girl from "Queen Sea Big Shark" who rocked the stage just before them was pretty awesome. They offered us a ride back to town which we were so grateful for, the exits and the buses and the subways and the cabs was not something we were looking forward to.

The bus ride was a lot of fun. Got to know the people a little bit better and DJ Reggie played music for everyone over the PA system. And James, the lead singer of "Does it Offend You, Yeah?" did some beatboxing as well. We went with them on a quick tour of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City since they were only in town for one more day and their hotel was right there. Then we went for drinks at a bar before going to the club where Reggie was playing that night. All in all it was very fun. I think it was a pretty good first concert so I'll probably be up to a few more later on.

This is something I would never have done in Vancouver. Something about being in a different country thousands of miles away makes you feel like you should do something with your life. Anything!

At this point thinking "为什么普通话这么难说?!"

Don't know why I was doing this one exactly. One of those in between moments when you're just fooling around.

The artist is Nina Griffee, a painter from the UK living in Beijing now. You can check out her other projects as well as much shots from this shoot.

http://www.ninagriffee.co.uk/

And the photographer is Prez Bankiewicz, originally from Poland, doing photography in Beijing.

http://www.prezbankiewicz.com/index.html

Three months have flown by so fast and before I knew it I had to book a last minute flight to Hong Kong before my Visa expired. I stayed for just 3 days that were packed with meetings and events and it was the best time I ever had in Hong Kong.

So putting the heat and the awful humidity aside, it's a pretty great city air conditioned. The MTR (metro system) is so efficient and well organized that makes getting around so easy and the food is just.. I've missed dim sum. Not much sight seeing but I did get to take a tour of Shaw Studios which was just gorgeous.

Here's one of the sound stages. They just finished shooting a film here, can't say which one, but they reconstructed Mong Kok, a well known area in Hong Kong. Half way to fully torn down, I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference if the whole thing was up.

Still under construction, this will be a 400 seat theatre that they'll be using for screening their films.

I took a lot of pictures, most of the same kind of stuff you see at other studios. They have a few large sound stages, beautiful mixing rooms, largest room for make up in the world? (something like that), film developing centers and offices everywhere. The coolest thing that I saw was this. Every single building is supported on these giant rubber squares for earthquake/typhoon protection. They brought me down here where I'm standing under sound stage 1 and poking at these building shock absorbers!

And here I finally get to ride around a studio in a golf cart! Always wanted to do that, we drove around Shaw studios and then went to TBV to look around too. Hehe, that was a good day. Only touristy day I had in HK between and during appointments which was quite fun. Went to an Alive not Dead party afterwards, huge party, so many people, so very different from Beijing, and was exhausted by the time I finally got back and slept well. Back in Beijing now, much to do :)

Sorry I've been quite busy, no time to organize much and so here comes a very random posts with some pics that I've snapped over the week.

Electric scooter! So fun! My good friend Feng, a Malaysian student at the Beijing Sports University is taking me and Amy, Wushu veteran visiting us from Vancouver, around the Sports University on his scooter. I think we were going to lunch but we were so caught up about riding on a scooter with 3 people (Feng's done 4 he says). Exhilarating to say the least, the wind was kinda cold after awhile. You can buy a really nice scooter here for cheap. Feng's bike here, the most powerful electric bike they had, was 3000rmb, under $500 Canadian (I'm so very tempted).

Another tour of Wang Fu Jing could not be done without seeing scorpions this time around. They say scorpions taste like chips, nothing too particular about them.

I wonder if it's the same for these black ones... they're about 5 times the size of the other ones. Very thick.

This was at a very high end restaurant so I'm tempted to say they were very thorough with their Chinese/English menu. I'm thinking they just really like foreigners so they give you a discount if you order it in English.

If only I had white balancing on my phone. This is something I did for fun a while back when I had time and energy to spare. Let's call this a teaser, I took this snapshot just before I tried to wash it off (took a few days to get it completely off). Should have some better shots to share soon.

Also a quick huzzah for my forum reaching 50 members! I'll keep responding as much as I can, and hopefully can get to know a few other actors and martial artists around the world as well as fans. Thank you!

I've always known my roommate Darren as someone who speaks his mind and isn't afraid of what others may think. He proves that once again with this short film that he shot in Singapore awhile back that has just launched its trailer. It is the most controversial film to ever come out of Singapore with sexually explicit scenes and heavy content. Needless to say it has stirred up a huge interest in the media, and so I will add to it! The project is called "Hush". Warning is above so please do not go to the link if you are easily offended!

http://alive.tom.com/darrenscott/blog.html

I got a call from Maya this evening while I left after having dinner with some friends. She asked me what I was wearing and I thought to myself that that was just a little odd. But I went with it, "Ok, I'm wearing a jacket, and a sweater, and jeans, shoes" (my Mandarin's great now, haha), and she said "No, no, no". Turns out she wanted to know what my sizes were. Maya is the casting director for the film I've been in consideration for. Two months and 22 days since arriving in Beijing, and I have booked my first role!

This is was from my first audition here that makes it that much better. And I don't want to divulge anything before I'm allowed to, so here's an outline. It's going to be a Chinese Blockbuster. It's starring two of the biggest stars in Asia, Andy Lau and Fang Bing Bing, and it will be a lot of fun now that I'm working on it! Update with more details later on!

This is the 3rd time it's happened to me and probably the most outrageous I thought. Every now and then a cab driver will ask you to wait while he picks up something to eat or buy a pack of smokes or go to the bathroom. That's reasonable, they work insane hours and don't always get to stop where they need to be. This was exceptional.

This is my cab driver taking a pee while I wait for him. Again not so uncommon. The impressive part, and I wish I would have taken the time to go out for you to see the scope of things because I had the time, is that he stopped in the middle of one of the center highways on a very busy road here in Beijing. He saw green and trees and just stopped to pee letting those behind him find their way around him. Lots of honking of course!

Been hanging out and talking to the director, producers of this project and it's been a crazy ride. The director and his team of people have all been good company, easy going, yet incredibly professional. And now after an audition and 3 callbacks, it comes down to my Chinese and being here for just under 3 months is not completely fluent, despite how much I've improved in this amount of time.

Whatever the outcome, the movie should be great, it's got a lot of very talented people working on it, and I'll be sure to inform everyone about it shortly whether I have a part in it or not :)

Been incredibly busy and I would love to tell everyone a little bit more, but I'll have to wait another day or so before I do that..

My friend Amy's in town visiting all of her many friends in Beijing. We watched "The Cove" just now and it was sad. Eye opener for sure, so much so that I just have to support them and to raise awareness of the dolphin slaughter going on in the city of Taiji, Japan. It's a very powerful movie if you get a chance to see it so I'm not going to review it or tell you every detail that made me turn away from the horror of it.

But dolphins are rounded up in this little city to be sold to aquariums all around the world to perform or for people to swim with. Those who aren't selected are killed and that number amounts to 23,000 dolphins that are killed each year in this little town. I remember reading an article about Hayden Panettiere (Heroes) being arrested for her efforts to uncover the secrets in the cove. Shrugging it off at the time as Tom foolery, given the opportunity and circumstances I would have done it as well. Do what you can, it can start with this petition. It's better late than never, and hopefully while we still can.

http://www.takepart.com/actions/the-cove-help-save-japans-dolphins/28067

Few things that you need to know about the Chinese. There are billions of us, and we get things done. Labour is cheap here and so there are a lot of jobs you would see here that you would not normally see elsewear. Since the preparation of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, many of these jobs include beautifying the city. Cleaning, trash removal, etc.. it's all done quickly with many many workers.

Here's a team of workers cleaning up the streets in my neighbourhood. The cleaned out all the hedges where people throw their garbage into and went back and forth through the neighbourhood throughout the day. Working at an easy, constant pace, many of them taking breaks for conversation. They get the job done quickly nonetheless.

A good glass cleaning of the roof at the airport to keep the new terminal sparkling.

I think this was at the Lama Temple. It was just after a day of snow and they were starting to clean it up already. You can see the piles of snow everywhere.

They had probably about 40 people working around the temple shoveling snow. The ladies worked in pairs dragging a plastic tarp full of snow out of the temple. The men, wheelbarrelling the snow off to the side and throwing the snow over the walls.

This is the best part. The trees looks so clean. And warm. Hehe.

Just did the callback for my audition. First audition here, first audition in Chinese here, first a lot of things already and I'm quite proud of myself, which is why I'm so happy. There are never any guarantees in this business of course but when you go in there and do exactly what you planned to do and then some and the casting director has a big smile on her face, you can't help but feel the same way she looks! Would love to say more about the project, but again, no guarantees and so I'd rather not say anything unless I book it, deal? Fair enough.

Nonetheless super duper happy, so much so that I ran out of there, quite literally, for about 2 blocks. Note to self and all others, don't run when you're wearing a suit with pants that don't have much give, no matter how happy. 0_0 yep...

I'd also like to thank everyone for continuing to visit my page here, I do notice, and it makes me consciously think about bringing my camera along and snapping all the memories I may have otherwise left behind. So thank you, I'll keep posting!

No I didn't win anything. No I wasn't nominated. But I got to go! That's enough for me. For now.

My grandma in 2012 was in town for the ceremony and so I was to accompany her to the event. I picked her up at the airport which was a new experience because we got these passes that let us through basically everywhere and we went to the actual plane to get her!

I was an airport worker for a day and got to use all the staff/crew entrances I always glance at when waiting in the long lines at the airports.

It was very nice to see Lisa again, she's as sweet as ever and still looking spectacular at her age. She is to win an achievement award for being such an icon representing Chinese culture.

John Woo! Super happy to see this guy here. Great speech, great guy.

I don't know what it is about female singers here or who this is exactly... but I swear that she was lip synching. Otherwise she hits those high notes with such ease that you don't see any tension in the extreme close up of her face or throat and can't hear any breaths.... I'm pretty sure. Not much of a highlight but I just.. yea. Oh wait, she did say thank you at the end that I'm pretty sure wasn't pre recorded.

Olympic Champs! Saw these 4 endlessly on TV over the course of the Olympics. Got the speed skaters, cute one that smiles a lot but doesn't talk much, and the funny one that woke 3 golds while sick. And the duo. The girl incredibly built, you can clearly see the years of training in the backless dress. Loved the guy's mandarin, super clear.

Thank you. This guy was pretty good, very obviously not lip synching. The wushu guys doing the background interpretive dancing was pretty funny too. Everything I used to imagine!

And last but not least, Lisa, making a wonderful speech. The older gentleman on the left was awesome as well. He made a very funny intro and had a lot of charm to him.

The event was hosted by the Pheonix TV station in China. It was held at the Beijing University. The event was loooong... I sincerely hope they cut it down for the tv version. I did buy a suit for the event, which is quite snazzy and I would love to elaborate on everything but just some quick highlights and then I need to sleep. Update on my happenings: Event tomorrow night with Darren, should be fun. My first audition here in Beijing last week went great, I have my first 2nd callback on Monday which I am preparing for, so fingers crossed everyone! I'm working on my Chinese!

China tries very hard to make this Country foreigner friendly and almost everything now is labelled for the foreigners that can't read Chinese. Of course their English is not perfect, and some of the signs take awhile to comprehend. None the less, I quite enjoy them, and so here are some signs of China!

After a second look at this pic on the lcd I noticed the sign, hoilet!

This wasn't a great toilet, hole in the ground as expected.

"Raises the donkey field". I don't know how they got cattle range, sheep farm, then raises the donkey field. Even if you don't know how to read Chinese, look at the characters, just the middle one is different for these three. Donkey, cow and sheep respectively. Raises the donkey field.. lol, I love China.

A lot you can't do here. The second from the bottom on the left. Can't quite figure out what that is...

That is a lot of change. There's even more on top and on the floor for people who missed the target.

And here's the sign. Apparently no one saw it.

And the last one. I had to do my part. Deep deep down, I'm still Chinese :)

So you have two options. Go hang out with friends and friends of friends all night, or stay home and practice your lines for an audition the next day in a foreign language?

Normally an easy decision for me, however the curve ball involved is that the friends and the friends of friends include the director of the film I'm auditioning for the next day as well as many of the people working on the film! This kind of thing never happened in Vancouver, haha.

I'm not a partier at all, I don't drink and I'm usually the designated driver but I went to several bars, night clubs and was out till the sun came out. It was a very fun night, met a lot of new people, a nice crowd full of all sorts of characters and all throughout I had the audition in the back of my mind.

I spent the later half of the night talking to the designated driver of the night, Wudi, a Wushu world champion and captain of the Beijing Wushu Team, considered the best in the world. (Little tidbit that he shared with me, if you drink and drive here, you get an automatic 15 days in jail. No matter what, and so no one does it, it's quite effective.) We're the same age with a very different background. Back when I was in training I would watch his videos all the time so it's nice to get to hang out with him now. Very cool guy, and speaks English very well.

I took a shower as soon as I got home and went over my scenes. Then woke up several hours later and did the same thing before heading off to the audition. Doing a good audition is one thing, doing it well in another language is another. When I left, I just wanted to scream and run at top speed. That's a good feeling.

There are many Chinese stereotypes. A very prominent one is that Chinese people can't drive and being in Beijing that has become hard to ignore. When people mention a Chinese stereotype to me, I always say that we're almost a third of the world's population, so we should not only have the world's worst but the world's best at everything as well (Chinese people aren't short either once you visit a Basketball schools...). With so many million cars on the street here in such a small areas, it's quite amazing how there aren't many more car accidents than I see, and that makes me think that Chinese drivers are actually decent drivers. Of course accidents are inevitable, and last week I was caught in the middle of one. And whether or not the drivers are bad or good here, they need a new system to deal with the car accidents.

So when I said I was caught in the middle of an accident, that's exactly what it was. Here are some photos, see if you can figure out what's going on. Two pics here, one looking forward, one looking back.

A car turning left hit a bus that was trying to go through across him. It wasn't a big hit or anything, didn't see any dents at all really but none the less they were there talking it out. When they get in accidents here, they don't move, they stay put right in the middle of traffic and wait for the cops to come. Don't need witnesses or need to recreate the scene but they blocked 4 lanes of traffic. Of course people still need to get by, but there's no such thing as taking turns here so everyone went at exactly the same time. All 4 directions tried to get on with their way, those who needed to go around the accident did so, but soon after, one lane was stuck and was blocking another lane so that it couldn't go around anymore, and that lane blocked another, and so on and on. It's like when you close a cardboard box and push that last corner in so that it stays closed. Looking at these pictures I got so confused that I decided to make a diagram of the accident. And here you go, my lovely art work.

Definitely considering being an architect after drafting this one out. So I'm in the green car, blues are cars, reds are buses, and no one is moving. We were stuck for about a half hour before the cops came and one car backed up into a lamp post and turned around letting every other car eventually get on their way.

Oh and a very interesting note that was brought up a few weeks ago by a friend that I thought was very fascinating. We were talking about China and the habits of the Chinese people and how it is so different in North America. He said that because the people are so repressed here that any freedom they have they will use it. Many of those freedoms include the very loose traffic regulations, the spitting, and the littering. It makes sense and I'm used to the traffic now. Although I can not bring myself to litter, I will look less sourly at the people who do here as I know eventually some government paid worker will pick it up. The spitting... can still be a little much.. most of the spitting I wouldn't call spitting... it comes with the nose blowing as well, not into a tissue, but in a general direction. Plenty of colourful fluids all around, not enough rain. How I miss Vancouver's weather.

I am preparing my first audition in Chinese, super excited for it, I have several events coming up, and people coming to town to visit. Life is incredibly busy, barely have time to go to the gym and much I could write about but only one I will elaborate on today!

That would be my first home cooked meal by me! Darren ate out today and so I decided upon myself to put something together by myself. I've been buying groceries for awhile now but this is the first time I cooked much anything without a recipe and I'm so ever happy about it!

Yes I was so happy with it that my first thought was to take a picture. Unfortunately I took too long and the piece of blue rare steak I cooked ended up being well done... hehe, oh well, can you guess how much this steak cost me?

It was $1.50 Canadian approximately! I picked up some mushrooms and lettuce and stir fried it with some spicy black bean sauce. Cooked some rice with the rice cooker and presto, we have dinner and some breakfast! I'll need to work on my presentation next time... worry about my audition first!

My Chinese friends here don't get much of a chance to exercise with full time jobs on the weekdays, so to make up for it they usually do some sort of physical activity on the weekend. It's Saturday, it also happens to be hike day.

I haven't been on a hike in a long time but I was very much looking forward to a different kind of exercise, some fresh air and just hanging out with a bunch of Chinese people (one of my favourite activities here). The place we went to was "Xiang Shan" or Fragrant Hills. We actually went around that particular mountain but all the signs I saw was for the fragrant one.

It's 9am and we're off! A beautiful day, we were quite lucky too as it snowed heavily the next day, warm sunshine and smiles on everyone's faces. This is the same group that I went to check out the hot springs with a Darren (www.alivenotdead.com/darrenscott).

They've been here about 2 years ago but they took another trail. This one no one really knew about but thankfully they brought a map so we didn't need to get lost. It also wasn't much of a "trail". It's a road. Plenty of bikers here along with the walkers with their hiking sticks going up and down the different mountains here. The first leg of the journey was up a series of steps much like the stairs on the great wall, all made of stone and uneven.

As we climbed we got to see more and more of the city coming clear to us. Unfortunately it wasn't a blue sky in the city, you can clearly see the layer of smog hovering over it. It took us just over two hours to get to our first checkpoint at the top where we lunch at the top. Lunch was quite wonderful, no silk worms! Everyone had a backpack filled with goodies, and they threw it all in a pile in the middle of a circle. Of course it was almost all junk food except for two whole chickens, hehe, and they brought disposable gloves to eat it with! Brilliant! I would never have thought to do that.

And so we continue our hike.

We soak in the sights.

We tell stories.

We did much random exercises along the way. Streches. "Pao Ku" was yelled a lot when we saw the odd wall for someone to jump/climb on. FYI: "Pao Ku" means "run cool" or parkour.

After awhile me and Darren got tired of walking so we decided to drive instead. Darren didn't like my driving too much... been here too long.

Of course that was just a dream. Everyone was exhausted and we took breaks later on. My feet were killing me but I didn't let on till much much later... Han Shu Bai here airing out his feet. Not a bad idea.. I'm pretty sure my socks after this hike could have made a normal person faint if held too close to the nose.

This picture is not of Vivian in the pink, or Han Shu Bai there. Or the two in the back. It's of the guy way down the road. That's Jiang Tao. We've been walking for awhile at this point of time and Jiang Tao needed to go to the bathroom. We passed a small community with a few buildings and he asked a lady there where the bathroom was. She replied "Nar dou you Ci Shuo." Which means "Everywhere's a bathroom". I laughed at that but was not surprised. And so Jiang Tao picked a spot and went which put him far behind the group.

Of course we had to eventually make our way to our destination and here we did it! Spectacular view, seemed like we would never get here but we did. A very terrifying thought came to me, as we heard the road they thought was there was not, I thought we would have had to go back the way we came for fear of getting lost... No way. The reason why is that it took us just about 8 hours to get there. Looking back it was incredibly difficult to find where we came from. But here's a photo to help you view the scope of our hike.

We could barely see it and it amazed me at how far we've travelled, but that red arrow I drew over there points to our first checkpoint that took us the two hours to get to... Yes it's pointing to the furthest mountain and only on the higher quality pic can I zoom in and see the radio towers there. Running joke everytime our leader Jiang Tao told me the next check point he would always say, "not that point, not the further one, the furthest one." And I would laugh everytime thinking that was impossible, but... nope. Anyhow we asked for directions and found a trail down. This was a real trail for once, completely natural with stones, mud, snow, everything to keep you on your toes if you were lucky.

That's what a trail should look like. It was steep and slippery and took us two hours to get everyone down safely. By that time we were all exhausted, my feet were hurting like crazy and I was limping as my knees really felt the descent. The non hiking shoes didn't help either. Not many smiles going around, but after an hour bus ride back to the city we had a nice Korean BBQ dinner where everyone was smiles again, another hour subway back to the apartment where both me and Darren passed out as we made contact with our beds.

One last look at the scenery here. It really was quite beautiful. But I don't think I'll be coming back anytime this year. Or next year. The year after that if I get hiking boots.