Going to the Movies in China

Well, Jenny and I just returned from seeing Spiderman 3 at the local movie theatre.

One of the most exciting discoveries that we made upon returning to China was that our city has a very nice "international" movie theatre on the 4th floor of the Walmart. International means they occasionally show English movies. We saw our first one there last summer- Sahara, which was kind of funny since Sahara came out like 2 years before, but no matter.

I heard there was a lot of controversy regarding bootleg copies of Spiderman 3 in China before the movie was even released. We never saw any copies floating around here (at least not yet), but we were thrilled to learn they were going to be showing it beginning May 1st. So, tonight we arranged a baby-sitter, set out on out bikes and had a little date night.

Going to the movies in China is not like it is in the States. First off, you can bring in your own food- which I totally love. We headed over to McDonald's before hand and brought in a bag full of goodies. We had been talking about going to Pizza Hut, but we didn't want to wait on it. Anyway, so that's one great thing. Movies in China are very very loud. They kick up the volume to near deafening intensity, I guess because everything is always loud here. People don't turn off their cell phones, and there are no polite messages to remind them. So, throughout the movie we hear people talking on the phone at their normal volume, like nothing special is going on. The movies are also apparently a good place to let the kids get their energy out. About 10 kids were running through our theatre during the movie, playing tag in front of the screen. Then they stood along the aisle and talked and laughed and generally disturbed anyone who was actually trying to watch the movie. Sounds like fun, right?

Another interesting tidbit- the movie was in English, but subtitled in Chinese. Thankfully, our Chinese is decent enough that we can look at the subtitles and generally know what they say. So, during the course of the movie, there were plenty of moments that made Jenny and I laugh, but no one else in the audience did. We figure this comes down to them not getting the jokes, because a lot of things were cultural, and other things just weren't translated correctly. For instance, in one seen, Mary Jane calls Peter Parker a "nerd" which got a laugh out of Jenny and I, but not the rest of the audience. I guess this was because the Chinese was translated as "you are very smart." Not as funny.

The movie was great. When we are sitting there sometimes, it's easy to forget about everything else and just enjoy a good movie (barring little disturbances). It was an altogether different story coming home. We rode our bikes out there, so we had a long ride back. Traffic was crazy as usual, and we could barely cross the street without almost getting hit by a car. People drive down the wrong side of the road, run red lights, cut past bikes and pedestrians at random. Bikes and motorcycles also drive all over the rode and sidewalk, and pedestrians are just as bad. It's really a case of every person for themselves on the road. I think the general idea is you are only responsible for not running into anything, and you expect everyone else to do the same. As long as everyone keeps with this plan, it usually works out okay- right? Wrong. Traffic here is deadly no matter how you go about it. Sometimes it makes going out really miserable. Add to that the constant catcalls from people on the street and the result is a pretty frustrating, stressful ride home. Oh well, in the end it was still a good night. I should spend more time blogging about traffic patterns in this country. It's a really bizarre phenomenon.