Where are John and Kara?: Somewhere in the Hebei/Liaonging Province, China

The Eastern gateway into China

One warm and terribly polluted recent April day, our dashingly handsome John was invited to the small coastal city of Qinghuangdao to star in a Chinese TV commercial. On the fast train, Qinhuangdao is only several hours from Beijing and is well known for its laid back lifestyle and abundance of seafood.

A vivacious edible thing

John's manager at work had a friend that needed help with the shooting and convinced John to head along. Kara wasn't so keen to go, but after offering a free first class ticket decided it was an 'ok' offer (smiley face).

The train departed early in the morning and we had spent the previous evening racing from several ticket offices (and back home again for passports) to get the tickets. It wasn't exactly easy, with a Chinese work colleague on the phone translating we got half the tickets right. By the time we realised the return ticket was from the wrong station the ticket office had closed.

The remains of lunch

John by the beach!

So we boarded the train! But, half way there the phone rings and the company asks if we can actually get off one stop further. Deterred somewhat with our limited Chinese we try to hail the conductor to see if we can change our tickets mid trip (seems you can!). On arriving into what felt like an old city suburb (and not Qinghuangdao) we were greeted by a very friendly 'George'.

George, dressed very casually greeted us in broken English and took us over to his very flash BMW- driver and all. We drove through the beautiful and small seaside township - Shuangjing before stoping at a very large hotel for lunch.

The meal was out of this world! As you can see (on the left) the shell remnants of John's lunch. By the time lunch finished it was already 1pm- where exactly was this filming? George said don't worry, don't worry. First we go visit his factory. And who exactly was this George, since we are asking questions?

So we left Shuanjing and drove through what seemed like a ghost town! It was entirely empty! Easily there were 50 or 60 high rise apartment buildings, schools, shopping malls but no people. George explained that the government has built the city and the people will come. They will come... Five years ago it was empty grass lands. Quite an odd concept.

Blueberry picking / photo shoot

Shortly after viewing Georges soon to open 'computer factory' with still no sign of shooting a movie George suggested we go pick some blue berries- "you like blueberry??" So off we went in his air conditioned car, several hours north to what can be described only as a tiny cluster of mud and wood houses, a rural settlement of Chinese farmers. There we had our photos taken picking blueberry's. Very strange but very delicious. It was about this time we started to think that maybe we were going to be kidnapped? Maybe this is some kind of trick... it seemed a little to good to be true. We had really very little idea of were we were and what exactly were we doing? And why did the blue berries taste so good?

Looking back at the polluted, empty and desolate city

After apprehensively exploring the farm with the local farmers (as you can see we really weren't dressed for it) we wondered what everyone was talking about. We got back in the car and returned towards the city again stopping at a local fishing port and admiring the very old and entirely wooden boats.

Outside a small shop at the Great Wall entrance

Within the city, we stopped at a small restaurant, which was supposedly famous as it is a favourite of one of China's well known astronauts. The local food was absolutely scrumptious and not what we would have ever chosen for ourselves (think along the lines of a meat flavoured jelly).

Shortly after we were taken on a short tour of a section the great wall which passes through the town before being raced to the train station and boarding our train back to Beijing. And no... no filming??