It is the longest, greatest and biggest tourist attraction in the world (you can see it from the moon, right?): the Great Wall of China. And a powerful image as well, according to some of the African filmmakers, who would like to capture it in their own way. So we went in convoy, escorted by many family members of some of the small-time local actors. As it turned out, the African filmmakers themselves became the big attraction of the day.
Snake master Xenson hoped to see his mythical snake in the majestic wall meandering across the hills, but he also wanted to capture the image of its many visitors. In that respect he was not disappointed, for the stream of Chinese tourists almost swallowed up his small crew.
We wanted to take along the newly arrived African filmmakers Omelga Mthiyane (from South Africa) and Yves-Montand Niyongabo (from Rwanda) so their first impression of China would be memorable.
From left to right: Mentor Sherman, who was indispensable in the first part of this project and sorely missed in the second part. Filmmakers Omelga, Xenson and Yves discussing cameras in the early morning. In the middle the evenly indispensable Zhu Rikun, who manages the Film School and is now managing the trip to the wall. A local ‘black’ cab driver. Not our favourite driver. This one is too loud (a characteristic of the North Chinese) and he always wants too much money. Our favourite black cab driver is Mr. Yang, who brought us safely back and forth to the airport many times and only discussed money with us once. The black cabs are black cars, but they are also economically ‘black’, as they have no meter. So you have to discuss the fare yourself and then non-locals are always at a disadvantage. Anyway, I should make a picture of Mr. Yang.
New Arrivals Omelga Mthiyane, left, and Yves Montand Niyongabo, right, and almost local Xenson.
Discussion on the village square just before we leave. Omelga carries her Rotterdam bag proudly. Xenson, as always, also looks proud in self-designed clothes. Yves carrying a tripod, but at the last moment he decided not to join us. He had to send in an application for funding and needed today’s postmark on the envelope. We could not talk him out of it. Phone them, someone said. Just email them, another said. Say it is a Chinese holiday, a third one tried. But Yves is a serious young filmmaker (at 22, he is our youngest) and he waved us goodbye and went to the film school’s office to work.
So there we went, soon to experience a serious Beijing traffic jam.
Traffic jam on the way to the Great Wall.
Xenson wanted to have images of dense traffic anyway, so the traffic jam on the way to the Wall was in fact an extra bonus on this nice and surprising day.
The Wall is not too far from Beijing and most local tourists (from all over China, I guess, and in fact hardly any foreigners) come by bus. But the traffic as you can see is not caused by tourists. It is the exploding economy of China itself that put us in the middle of an endless sea of trucks.
Xenson had taken his two boy actors to the Wall and the boys took their big sisters to take care of them and the big sisters took their mothers and the mothers brought the aunties so we ended up with a really big family on a family day out. And so we took family pictures, unaware as yet of what we were getting into.
Xenson and his two acting boys.
I think Xenson was looking for a mass of people that would move like a snake over the snakelike wall.
Xenson The Snake Attacking The Wall.
But in fact he found his snake on the way back. An endless curving and twisting line of people waiting for the bus that would bring them back to Beijing.
Xenson filming the bus line after the Great Wall.
Probably we started it off ourselves. Since we had our large Chinese family with us, we took family pictures. First it was just us and our family.
Omelga and the Family of Xenson's Boy Actor.
Then the first stranger entered the picture.
Local Tourist Posing With A Real Black Man.
After that there was no saying ‘no’ anymore. Especially Omelga, the tall African woman, became the victim since she is too nice to say no. Jokingly we said we should charge money for it, but I really do think we could have raised our budget that day.
I toyed with the idea of putting all the pictures up on this blog (running over a hundred), but I guess after the following few examples you will have a fairly good impression of what happened.
And so it went on and on. It must have strengthened Omelga's film idea (more about that in a later episode), which is based on the assumption that the Chinese would see her, an African woman, as very different.
At the end of a tiring day Omelga made another gesture towards the Chinese. She enjoyed a cup of instant noodles and ate it with chop sticks.
Omelga and the wonders of Instant Noodles.