My first Beijing arts event is the opening of a Charlie Chaplin film festival of all things. Our involvement was fairly minimal but it was a good do and interesting to experience the venue (open-air plaza of a very cool-techy residential development called, cannily, MOMA), audience (sophisticated, full-house) and production level (high). It could have been Tokyo. Nice to watch City Lights again, tonight with live musical accompaniment by an accomplished jazz trio. I can't believe it's been 21 years since I produced a small touring exhibition commemorating Chaplin's birth...
I have been asked whether I'm worried about it being Friday 13th today. The Chinese are obsessed with lucky & unlucky numbers. 8s are good as ba sounds like fa ("wealthy"); the Olympics started at 8.08pm on 8/8/2008. 4s are bad as su sounds like "death". In my language school there are no floors 4, 14, 24 etc, nor a 13th. Phone numbers and car plates with lots of 8s are very expensive, 4s correspondingly dirt cheap. And a phone number with 520 in a sequence is popular as it sounds like "I Love You" when said in Chinese.
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