Behind The Shoot: Beijing China

	Beijing, China March 5 - 13, 2000 by jerome.meriweather FEB 21 I've always wanted to go see China. To see the Great Wall, Forbidden City, Summer Palace, but I've never had the opportunity to go until now. United's Catering Division Food Presentation looked like my best chance of going. FEB 25 China requires a written invitation in order to get a Entry Visa into their country. March 7 & 8 were the final dates set for the Food Shoot. Originally the shoot was set for the middle of February but was delayed, which caused some passport/Visa problems for me. I needed to get an extension. Enter Expert Visa Services, a company that specializes in expediting the passport process. I downloaded the passport extension application form from the Internet, filled it out and turned the whole thing over to Expert Visa Services. With only a week left before my flight, I was a bit nervous about whether I was going to make this trip.
	MAR 01 My passport with new extensions and a China Entry Visa finally came and I could breath a little easier. Now I had to change all my reservations, hotel, flights and especially seat assignments. The shoot is on the 7th. You lose a day in travel. That means I should leave Sunday, 5th of March. So back to Apollo I went to make changes. I also decided to tack on a couple of extra days to do some scenic shooting for United's Slide Library. In my position I have the freedom to do that when I wish, which is one of the nice benefits of the job. MAR 04 - Packing Spent most of the 2nd at work packing my camera equipment and lights into my LowePro and Tamrac bags. I normally travel alone, so I try to keep it as light as possible. Took Friday the 3rd off from work and I packed all of my clothes that Saturday the 4th.
	MAR 05 At the Airport A couple of United Catering personnel were also booked on my flight. Never having been to China and unfamiliar with the airport layout, having some familiar faces onboard the flight would make the arrival in Beijing a lot easier to face. MAR 05 - 06 The Flight What can one say about 16 hours of flying. Twelve hours from (ORD) Chicago to (NRT) Narita, Japan. Hour and a half layover and another 4 hours from NRT to (PEK) Beijing, China. During the layover in NRT our group met up with more Catering people coming in from other Pacific area cities. Some of the employees brought along family members, after all, how many times does one get to fly into China. MAR 06 - 8:30pm Beijing Air Catering employees were waiting for us when we arrived in Beijing. There was a slight delay in the baggage area when my light stand bag didn't show up. Twenty minutes later it was found at another baggage gate at the other end of the terminal. Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . it happens to United employees too! Sixteen hours flying! It's 10 o'clock at night! I'm tried . . . but jetlag has set in so, I'm wide awake. We were all booked into the Holiday Inn - Lido, but I found it hard to get to sleep that night.
	MAR 07 - 08 Beijing Air Catering Kitchen We were picked up at 9 am and driven to the flight kitchen. The catering team held a meeting while I was taken into the kitchen to set up my gear. Setup was simple. Two Lumedyne lights with softboxes set on each side of a Food Cart turned on it's side and covered with a Blue Cloth held with Clips. I metered my strobes and I was ready to shoot. For the rest of the day ( in this case, two days ) I stood around and watched as Teri Fujiwara, Executive Chef Eric Kopelow, Assistant Kaye Whildin and the Beijing Air Catering chefs plate all the food that will be serviced on a future United Airlines food cycle out of Beijing. When they finished plating a meal, they would give it to me to photograph. A very long and boring process. By the way, these photos are seen by a variety of people from the executives to the chefs and flight attendants. As boring as the day shoot is, the evenings can be quite entertaining because, after all, you're with a bunch of chefs, and hitting the best restaurants in town always seems to be very high on their schedule.
	MAR 09 - Thursday Thursday was Menu Presentation day. That's when all the Pacific area United honchos review the new meals. They discuss, review, taste and make suggestions about whether the new meals are what they think United's customers will want to eat on flights out of Beijing. But first, the day started with our group visiting the Forbidden Palace. We spent a couple of hours walking through that city, from one end to the other before heading back for the Menu presentation. Normally I'm don't have to be at the presentation but that Thursday afternoon would be a special one because after the presentation, Beijing Air Catering personnel were going to take of us out to the Great Wall. And that's what I came here to see The Menu Presentation went on while I spent most of that time sitting out in the lobby reading a book. They finished around noon. There were the usual group photos in front of the Air Beijing Catering Company building, but once that was done, we all piled into the van, and off we went to the Great Wall. There are several location where tourists can go and see the wall, and at that time, I had no idea which one we were on our way to, and I didn't care. Sitting in the front seat of the van, I enjoyed watching the city, then the countryside go by and wonder how nice it would be to spend more time here photographing it all. Maybe on my next trip! After a 45-minute drive, we hit the mountains and way off in the distance, I could see a line traversing the mountain top. The line would disappear as we drove through the mountain pass, then reappear even larger then before as we got closer and closer. When we finally arrived, I looked up and all I could see was this small section of the wall and the cable car that would take us up to it. But to get to both you had to walk through a gauntlet of peddlers trying to hawk everything from hats, caps, T-shirts, silks and mats, and they could be quite aggressive. ( Whatever you do, unless you're going to buy something, KEEP MOVING, don't stop, because if you do, those peddlers will circle like sharks and devour you. ) Finally . . . I stood on the Great Wall . . . I climbed it's steps . . . . . . I was impressed! . . . and the ride back to the hotel was anticlimactic.
	MAR 10 Friday With my part of the Food Shoot finished, I set aside Friday to photograph the United Airlines station operations at the Beijing Airport. I really didn't want to go because other members of our group were going to see the Summer Palace and I wanted to go with them. But duty calls. Arrangements and appointments had been made and not showing up or canceling out would have been bad form. I had to go to the airport! (Damn it!) I grabbed a shuttle and met Katherine Wang in the terminal. I thought that this part of the shoot would take all day, but I forgot that United has only one morning flight out of Beijing and once that was gone, there wasn't a whole lot of activity. I was finished and back in the hotel by noon.
	MAR 11 Saturday All of the people in my group had flights out of Beijing for home that morning. I saw a few of them in the lobby and said my good-byes. Normally I travel alone, so you get use to the loneliness. But when I do travel with a group like this, and I spend a few days sight-seeing with them, to have to stand there and watch them all leave, only highlights the fact that you're in a foreign country, all by yourself. I said my good-byes quickly. I had two more days of shooting to do. Katherine Wang and our driver picked me up at the hotel at 9am. We sat in the car and came up with a quick list of places that we would go to that day. First on the list would be the Temple of Heaven. The Summer Palace would be next then back to Tianamen Square and the Forbidden City, climb up to Jung Sun Park and down to the Silk Market. A couple of these places were repeats from earlier tours.
	MAR 12 Sunday I decided that morning that I wanted to see more of the Great Wall, so we drove to Badaling where I spent all of the morning photographing. We also ate lunch at a KFC that was located at the foot of the wall. A KFC!. At the base of the Great Wall of China! America! You can love it, or hate it, but you can't ever deny that it has a very long reach. The afternoon was spent photographing the side streets of Beijing. I quit around 4pm, calling it an early day because I was tried and ready to go home.
	MAR 13 Monday Homeward bound. I was in China for a week and for that whole time, my sleeping patterns were way off. When I got home, it took me another week before I got a good nights sleep. . . . and so it goes.