27.06.12 - Reporting from Chinatown

Another day in the office. The older staff are definitely more chatty than the younger ones and seem quite laid back about everything. This week’s editor is Peter; he always wears the same hat, a sort of peasant cap, but is one of the more engaged ones. In meetings he always has a lot of intelligent things to say and seems to have always read all of the newspapers from around the world; he is married to a Korean woman and spent 3 years living in the back woods of Korea with her family when they first got married.
Day was spent emailing people about Olympics stuff; the angle they suggested was has life improved for people living in the Olympic Boroughs, i.e. ethnic minorities, what are ethnic newspapers saying, etc, etc.
After work I walked up to Geary Street to talk to the Hotel Frank boycotters and I arranged to come back on Friday to interview Marc Norton who is the ring leader. I walked through Union Square which is the heart of the city’s smart shopping district and carried on to Chinatown to see if I could

 get a ticket for the opening of the Israel China Film Festival. The theatre wasn’t open so I wandered the streets looking for somewhere to have a pedicure but as usual when you’re looking for something you can never find it despite having definitely seen lots of places on your previous visit. Chinatown is very similar to London’s version; some places that are so full of tourist tat you just can’t believe that anyone buys such crap and upmarket restaurants that anyone worried by hygiene might want to eat in. Then there are the shops and markets that are grimy and lively and the places to eat in that look like dirty english cafes but probably do great food. I went for one of the latter, formica table tops and stools and Chinese clientele, although I’m sure that lots of Chinese people have awful taste in food so I don’t know why we ever use that as an indicator of quality. Pizza Hut and McDonalds are always full of Brits. But the food was good and I got a miso soup to start and a square of bright orange jello to finish, free extras always make meals so much better.

I was right next door to the Great Star Theater so I went and bought my ticket, notepad out to get some quotes. I am a proper hack, I feel like to should be licking my pencil before I write anything down. Outside there were two women handing out pro-Palestinian leaflets trying to get people to boycott the festival. I thought ‘Ha, great this is my story’, talked to the two women, got some quotes, asked other people going to the film what they thought. I really thought I had stumbled across something more interesting than the initial story.

The film was called ‘Noodle’ and was an Israeli film about a Chinese boy whose mother gets deported without notice when he is being looked after by one of the people she cleans for. It was very touching and funny; the Israeli woman is an air hostess and she eventually smuggles him back to China in her hand luggage and reunites him with his mother.
When I got back I excitedly emailed all the people I had spoken to who were going to send me more information and wrote the beginning of my story.