First Day of Work!

(river that I cross when I walk to my internship)

Today was my first day at my internship. I am working for a company called the “China Film Group Corporation” which is the leading film production company in China, according to Google. They also do some production for TV and are currently working on coverage of the earthquake crisis in the Sichuan province, as well as some pre-Olympics coverage. Today, my main task was research, and I spent a few hours perusing the New York Times and other American newspapers for information regarding the earthquake. I have also been polishing up several different letters that are being sent out to thousands of the company’s friends to encourage them to make donations to the earthquake cause. Additionally, the company had recently conducted a series of interviews with the Australian men’s Olympic swim team. Because of the heavy Australian accents, the people working here had difficulty transcribing the dialogue to translate for subtitles, so I helped out by listening to the interviews and transcribing them to English. (Though, to be honest it was a bit of a challenge even for me!).

 

I wasn’t aware beforehand, but at 2:28pm, the entire country stopped for 3 minutes of mourning for the victims of the earthquake (a staggering 50,000 people at current estimations). I have generally been accustomed to observing “moments of silence” in remembrance of those who have died, but this particular moment was quite the opposite. Everyone at work stood up at once and suddenly there was a deafening wailing noise coming from the outside. All traffic stopped, and millions of car horns and air raid sirens around the country blared for 3 minutes straight. The TV kept flashing clips of people crying over lost family members, and clips of military troops lining up in Tiananmen Square.  It was extremely eerie and intense.

 

I had a meeting with my boss today, and he was so cool! On the side of his regular work, he has been working for a number of years on an exhibition of photos relating to Jewish presence in the Harbin and Shanghai regions of China in the last century (of which I had no prior knowledge). During the early 20^th century, thousands of Jewish people fled Russia to the northernmost province of China called Harbin. Later on during World War II, at a time when the entire civilized world closed its doors on the Jews seeking refuge, Shanghai welcomed in 30,000 Jews without even requiring visas. At the time, Shanghai was occupied by Japan, and so the Chinese were under persecution. The Jewish and Chinese people formed a kinship over this commonality of persecution, and their good relations have carried over to present day. The exhibition consists of a compilation of 500 photos that he selected from over 10,000 photos, and it has been endorsed by the United Nations (In the past he met several times with Kofi Annan to negotiate to make the exhibition a reality). It is going to premiere in Los Angeles this June, and then it will travel to D.C., Boston (hosted by Harvard), New York (Hosted by Yeshiva University), and to several other U.S. cities.

 

This company does a lot to garner cultural exchange between the entertainment industries of different countries. My boss has attended the last few Academy Awards, and was struck by the fact that there has never been a Chinese broadcast from the red carpet. This past year he has been negotiating with the Chinese government to allow a Chinese crew to be present at the Oscars, and next year will be the first that the Chinese people will receive an all-Mandarin broadcast from the red carpet.

If all that wasn’t cool enough, one of his close friends is Jackie Chan. Badass, huh?