“This is the best time of Rotterdam”, Jaap, a Dutch friend of mine, who is working as a volunteer for the 35^th International Film Festival Rotterdam said so, with a big hang over after an all night long party in the Grand Hotel Central.

I was not as lucky as him having a chance to work for the festival, but I guess like everybody living in Rotterdam, I was trying to be involved as much as possible in this big event of the city. What I did was to simply enjoy the movies! In order to economically enjoy a lot of films within twelve days, I first spent ten euros to get a tiger pass so that I could save three euros on each movie. Then I picked up twelve films, one film one day on average. It was not easy at all to choose only twelve movies out of hundreds of films, but I did try to get tickets of all the Chinese films participating in the festival; although I went to the ticket office the next day after the film festival opening, tickets of some films had been already sold out, Chinese ones included, for example the “Grain in Ear”, a prize winner in Cannes, a story about a poor Chinese-Korean mother whose husband is in jail, making friends with a cop and having an affair with a married man.

Finally I bought tickets of five Chinese films, including “Walking on the Wild Side” by Han Jie and “Taking Father Home” by Ying Liang, both of which were in this year’s competition of VPRO Tiger Awards. And so pleased to hear yesterday that one of the tigers went to Han Jie, congratulations, although I didn’t really like it in a way. It’s a movie full of energy, the energy of Chinese young generation in contemporary China, a society full of contradictions. But to me, the director put too much in one single story. As what I asked to Han Jie in the Q&A at the end of the screening, it was like skimming a Chinese newspaper when I saw the film: somebody was robbed and killed in this city, while the mine of that province collapsed. However, he put all these sad stories into this 89-minute long movie. China is a huge country, what’s the point to reflect all the social problems in only one movie story?

Regarding to this, I prefer “Taking Father Home” which in my opinion was more rough and authentic, or maybe also because it was shoot in Sichuan Province where I came from and I felt so close hearing my dialect in the movie. Besides “Taking Father Home”, there was actually another Chinese film called “Dam Street” about a story also in Sichuan, but I saw it before the film festival, by a one-euro Chinese fake DVD I bought in Beijing last November. However I can imagine if I had seen it in the film festival, it could be totally different to me from watching it on my laptop at home, because after seeing so many non-commercial films from all over the world within such a short period of time, just like having had an intensive workshop, everyone can become more sensitive and critical to films.

在MVRDV的半年中最刺激的部分莫过于20天内两次（2005年10月20日和2005年11月8日）冲回国去给甲方做方案汇报了：出发前一两天加班不合眼，上了飞机还在做pdf的presentation，到机场转机时还在安排成都那边的打图，到达成都后刚踏进机场洗手间准备方便一下甲方的电话就已经打过来了：“杨小姐，到了没有啊？” 于是脸不洗，牙不刷，奔到朋友那儿把打好的图取到，直接冲进威斯顿会议厅，只见甲方20来人黑压压的一片。。。这样的经历真是难得啊，如此短时间内的时空转化不知道下次会是什麽时候会再体验到？去年底在专栏里写了一篇文章纪录这个生活片断，把它转贴在这里：

Life is always on the way to somewhere, one year ago I left China to the Netherlands for studying, now I travel everyday from Delft to Rotterdam, morning and evening, the same time, train and metro, sometimes came across the same people on the way, I got on the train while he got off…

It is a routine, to go and to come back…

Within the past three weeks, I traveled back to China twice. Booking a flight ticket via the Internet is nowadays as easy as buying a train ticket on the platform of Delft, done within three minutes. Then simply packed with pieces of shirts and got on the train from Rotterdam to Schiphol, after 40 minutes arrived at the airport, spent 10 minutes on self-service check-in and just on time for boarding. The flight took off punctually at 16:50, which would take nine hours from Amsterdam to Beijing. It was not a short trip, but when you have got used to it, it’s just another extended journey from Rotterdam to Delft. The first dinner served exactly two hours after taking off; KLM blue stewardess sweetly smiled asking “chicken or pasta?” always the same, if this time I took chicken with rice, the next time I would take pasta; they never change, I had to invent some changes by myself. After the starter of a salmon salad, the main course of chicken and rice as well as the dessert of chocolate mousse, I and the colleague with me started working on the presentation to the client which is going to take place in ten hours in Chengdu, a capital city in south-west of China. Chinese clients are always in such a hurry…they suddenly told me on November the 1st the final presentation of bidding had been changed to 7^th of Nov instead of the 14^th which we had agreed on in the meeting last time in Beijing. What then could we do as architects? Only to work harder… I didn’t sleep at all the night before the flight only went back home taking a shower and picking up the luggage. Now when we were doing the pdf presentation on the plane, some other colleagues were also working for the booklet in Rotterdam…

9:10am Beijing time, arriving at the national airport, the first thing was to go to the business center to recharge our laptops and contact my colleagues in Rotterdam, making sure they had sent the booklet to my friend in Chengdu who was going to help us print it out. Poor guys… they just sent the finished booklet to my friend, it’s 2:00am already in Rotterdam, and they didn’t sleep at all the day before neither! However, they didn’t manage to do the required A0 panel, we had to do that. My flight to Chengdu was at half past twelve, so I still had some time to finish with it and send it for printing.

Four hours later, just landing in Chengdu my mobile rang, it was from the client that everybody was already waiting for us in the conference room, no shower, no tooth brushing, no sleep, only picked up our booklets and the A0 panel at my friend’s place, then the presentation started right away…

The start of the presentation could be the end of this journey, but after one night in Chengdu, a new journey would begin again, flew to Beijing, spent a night there and back to Amsterdam… never end, where is the destination?