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北京/上海

China day in the life Friends NSLI-Y sightseeing 北京 厦门 Today was our last day in 北京 but also our first day in 上海. In the morning, our director 陈老师 invited a famous Chinese screenwriter to talk to us. Before the question-answer session, we watched one of his famous movies, Fearless. It was a very interesting and action packed movie. Would 100% recommend. After the movie we had a "lecture" that was divided into 3 parts: him talking about himself, us asking him questions, him asking us questions.

During the first park of this talk, we learned that he did not want to write the screenplay for this film. He was actually confronted by the director and asked for his advice. His advice was that the script was horrible and they needed to re-write it. Therefore, he was hired to re-write it all. But it was a challenge for him because he had to remain in certain limitations including the location, since the stage was already built. After learning about his part in Fearless, many people asked him questions on why certain things were the way they were in the movie. After that, he asked us questions, all pertaining to the presidential election.

After the session concluded we took a group photo and left for the train station. On the way out of the hotel, they gave us McDonalds!!! We were rushed out of the hotel so fast that we all ate on the bus. Within 40 minutes, we arrived at the train station. There, we had to say goodbye to 杨老师 because she could not come to 上海 with us. Her visa had expired and she had to return to 厦门 to finish up her report on the University of Delaware. We all said our goodbyes, which felt so non-ceremonial and quick, and got in line for the train.

The bullet train was so nice, the quality and service. The seats were able to turn around so we could face our friends but even if you didn't turn your seats, you still had plenty of leg room. Although my ticket said my seat wasn't next to Skylar's, I still sat next to him (switching with Kelby). The train ride took about 5 hours, that went by very slowly. Two hours into the train ride, the train suddenly stopped. The staff ran through the cars in a hurry, trying to solve something while all of us sat in our seats confused. Turns out that there was a fire on the tracks outside that was creating smoke that came into one of the cars. This took them 30-45 minutes to solve, but once they did, we were                                                                                           back on the road going 305 km per hour.