Beijing China, Day 10 - The meeting & the obnoxious Americans
Updated: Apr 29, 2018
Wake up time - 7 am. At least I get to paint at home today. The weather can get very hot especially mid day.
I painted all morning and took a break at 1 to have lunch at home and go to a meeting with the museum staff. My roommate Rebecca came too. The meeting was about planning a lecture and an open house, part of our residency contracts. Everything is set for May 5th, so I will try to have as much work as I can done by then.
Check it out. English at the bottom. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Ks3g0f_-GiVcSGHcmH14Pw
Rebecca’s project is about embroidery, which involves a social gathering of about 15 women who will embroider a QR code on a garment. The QR code takes you to a personal site, which contains info about each artists. The idea is that Chinese strive on QR codes and Rebecca is connecting history (embroidery in the form of a social gathering of women ) with the present (QR codes). She found a seamstress who already made parts of the garment, ready to be embroidered. The garment is a traditional Chinese dress. The whole project will be filmed by the Australian embassy, who will then use the video to enhance the cultural exchange between Australia and China.
After our meeting we headed home (2 minutes away from the museum) and painted for a few more hours. We went out to dinner to my favorite restaurant so far, Meizhu.
They only beer they had was warm, so they allowed us to bring our own from the convenience store across. It was a really good local beer, thick and flavorful.
As we are sitting and having dinner I hear a loud and obnoxious conversation in English 3 tables away. I turn around and see a woman with two guys. One of them had his feet up on the chair next to him and is just ‘chilling’. He is the loudest. From their conversation, we learned that they are from New Jersey and they are all teachers. What a shame. The waiter who did’t speak English asked Rebecca to go over and translate that the restaurant is asking them to keep their voices down. What a shame! The people from New Jersey gave Rebeca the most condescending look, but they did remain quiet for a few minutes. Probably talking about us and trying to figure out where we are from. After a few minutes it got so loud again that I couldn’t hear my own thoughts let alone have a conversation with Rebecca. On our way out, we saw them waving good buy. I hope we never see them again.
I have not seen a Chinese being so disrespectful anywhere yet…