Xu Jinglei in Cape Town(都放这里了,有图,15楼有新的)

alicia

http://www.danwei.org/china_and_africa/xu_jinglei_at_green_market.php

Maya Alexandri is currently traveling as part of actress / director / blogger Xu Jinglei’s entourage in South Africa, and will file reports about the trip for the next week.

A multi-ethnic city, Cape Town has long been home to dislocated populations. Some of the populations come to Cape Town voluntarily, seeking economic opportunity. Historically, the Portuguese, Dutch and British sought their fortunes in Cape Town. More recently, Cape Town has attracted "economic refugees" from other African countries. This morning, at Green Market Square — an outdoor market with stalls selling African jewelry and souvenirs, like ostrich eggs and springbok hides — Xu Jinglei and her team haggled with traders hailing from all over Africa.

By contrast, some of the populations had no choice in their move to Cape Town. By noon, Xu Jinglei's team was shooting photos and footage in Bokaap. An historic neighborhood of brightly-painted houses, Bokaap had been home to slaves who the Dutch had imported from India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia in the eighteenth century, and who'd subsequently been freed. Called "Cape Malay," this population was part of the larger mixed-race group in Cape Town known as "coloreds."

Still other populations seem to have stumbled into Cape Town by accident. In the afternoon, the team gawked at penguins, waddling, nesting, feeding and swimming at Boulder Beach. These polar birds had not merely settled in Africa, but had selected the Indian Ocean side (that is, the warmer side) of Cape Point, despite the presence of significantly colder water on the nearby Atlantic Ocean side.

The confluence of voluntary, forced and accidental migration imparts a richness and variety to Cape Town that prompted Xu to observe that getting to know the city required a longer stay.
Ismail, a colored resident in Bokaap whose family has lived in the neighborhood for 300 years, went further: "Cape Town is where civilization below the Sahara started." Your correspondent hazarded that Cape Town seemed to be the birthplace of "melting pot" multi-culturalism. "That, too," Ismail agreed.

Below are some photos of Xu from the last few days:
Xu Jinglei at Green Market Square, Cape Town


Xu Jinglei and sunflowers


In Soweto


Pensive at O.R. Tambo Airport


Xu Jinglei wearing a Nan Fei hat

alicia

http://www.danwei.org/china_and_ ... he_meaning_of_f.php

Maya Alexandri is currently traveling as part of actress / director / blogger Xu Jinglei’s entourage in South Africa, and will file reports about the trip for the next week.

At Cape Point, in Cape Town, the cold Atlantic Ocean meets the warm Indian Ocean. Your correspondent has been told of people dipping a toe in on the Atlantic side, deciding it’s too cold, and driving for ten minutes to find a beach lapped by the warm Indian Ocean waves.

Our team didn’t drive the extra ten minutes, and the side we on which we dipped our toes was decidedly freezing. Clifton first beach, where we spent today, is located in an attractive bay, rich with marine life, such as bamboo-like sea kelp and periwinkles. Table Mountain rises in the background, affording beach-goers frequent sightings of the tandem para-sailers leaping off it.

Because of the water temperature, sunbathing offered more of an attraction than swimming, and the group that gathered at dinner was well-tanned. It was an unusual experience for some on our team, to judge from the response of one member: she expressed astonishment at the dark shade of a passer-by's tan, until Xu Jinglei explained, “That’s a black person.”

However unusual, getting tan would seem to be one experience that Xu, at least, associates with Africa. During dinner, the conversation turned to the question of what the “Fei” in “Feizhou” (Chinese for “Africa”) means. A team member expressed concern that fei (非) was a negative word, contrasting “Fei” — meaning “no,” or even “evil” — with the “mei” in “Meiguo” (“America”) — which means “beautiful.”

Various arguments were advanced to assuage this worry. A couple of people pointed out that “feichang” means “very,” and your correspondent speculated that the “Fei” might be a reference to the probability that the African continent was unknown to or isolated from the Chinese-speakers who coined the term.

Agreeing, Xu said that, when she hears “Feizhou,” she thinks of sunshine and black people — no negative connotations. Prior to this conversation, she said, she’d never considered that “Feizhou” might contain a negative implication. “But now that you mention it,” she laughed, “I’ll think about it.”

Xu Jinglei at Clifton first beach, Cape Town

alicia

http://www.danwei.org/china_and_ ... eler_xu_jinglei.php

Maya Alexandri is currently traveling as part of actress / director / blogger Xu Jinglei’s entourage in South Africa, and will file reports about the trip for the next week.

Word of the day: logistics. Xu Jinglei's team, 18 strong, traveled from Sun City to Cape Town, stopping at Johannesburg's O.R. Tambo Airport in between. The challenges of coordinating the on-schedule transit of that many people, and their attendant media equipment, would give anyone a headache (and has). But for Xu and her team, transit is simply another experience to document, and our journey was punctuated by photo shoots.

Pulling over by the side of the road by a field of sunflowers, we contemplated the fence separating us from them. "Just climb over it, it's not tall," urged Xu's intrepid photographer. "It's as tall as you," she retorted. Still, the fence wasn't electrified, and Xu was soon posing amidst the yellow petals.

Fences aren't the only boundaries that gave way to Xu's modeling imperative. The middle of the highway, the check-in gate at O.R. Tambo airport, and the runway onto which we deplaned in Cape Town all served as site locations for impromptu modeling shoots. Although we were holding up both car and pedestrian traffic, people generally seemed accommodating and amused, rather than annoyed.

The good thing about ad hoc photo sessions is that they liven up monotonous travel. The downside, of course, is that they can wreak havoc with your schedule. Once any idle moment becomes an excuse for a modeling shoot, all hope for on-time departures is dashed. Nonetheless, our handlers from South Africa's Department of Foreign Affairs have been, like the drivers and pedestrians we blocked, accommodating and amused: their smiles are as genuine as their headaches.

Xu Jinglei on the road from Sun City to Johannesburg

alicia

http://www.danwei.org/china_and_ ... _plays_sun_city.php

Maya Alexandri is currently traveling as part of actress / director / blogger Xu Jinglei’s entourage in South Africa, and will file reports about the trip for the next week.

Sun City, South Africa’s “Las Vegas,” is an extravagant resort built in the crater of a dead volcano. It’s long been a major draw for white South Africans, for whom Sun City was an escape from apartheid South Africa’s anti-gambling laws. Sun City was in Bophuthatswana, one of the areas designated as a “homeland” for black South Africans, where they had enough of a measure of self-governance to make gambling legal. Post-apartheid, Sun City has become a major draw for Chinese tourists.

Lush with rain forest vegetation, Sun City is more than just a place to gamble. It’s also a place where you can have your room ransacked by a baboon — if you leave your window open. While we were at breakfast, a baboon tore through some of our rooms, leaving in its wake a squashed banana, a partially eaten and subsequently discarded apple, and baboon tracks on the bed linens.

In one room, the baboon helped itself to expensive chocolates from the mini-bar. Since this mini-bar expenditure (along with those of the rest of Xu’s team) was guaranteed by your correspondent’s credit card, this development was unwelcome.

More welcome by far was the team’s subsequent experience with wildlife later in the day, when we went for a game drive through nearby Pilanesburg Game Park. The team enjoyed sightings of jackal, giraffe, rhino, wildebeast, hippopotamus, warthog, wild dog, impala, hartebeast and zebra, as well as a distant view of elephants.

The experience of an undeveloped natural environment made a deep impression. One team member went so far as to say that Pilanesburg had changed his mind. Previously convinced that mankind’s pollution would bring about destruction of the planet, he’d found in his experience of Pilanesburg’s wilderness landscape hope that the planet might survive.

Bumping along the road out of the game park, we passed some baboons relaxing by a lake. While the team had shown appreciation of wilderness untouched by man, team members were apparently less impressed by wild things that touch man (or, at least, man’s living quarters). “Oh baboons, we have those back at the hotel.”

Xu Jinglei in Pilanesburg Game Park


点击可看大图

alicia

http://www.danwei.org/china_and_ ... xu_jinglei_is_w.php

Maya Alexandri is currently traveling as part of actress / director / blogger Xu Jinglei’s entourage in South Africa, and will file reports about the trip for the next week.

Today Xu Jinglei's team began the day with a tour of Soweto. An acronym for "South Western Townships," Soweto was historically a segregated black area that lacked electricity and running water. Thanks to investment and development in South Africa's post-apartheid years, however, the area now boasts expensive houses, malls and a thriving tourist industry.

Famed tourist locations in Soweto include the houses of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. In addition to such sites, Xu Jinglei also visited an "informal settlement," where unemployment was as high as 60%, and the living quarters were constructed of corrugated tin and various scrap.

In the yard of a nursery school in this informal settlement, youngsters gathered excitedly by the fence as we passed. To our delight, they began chanting in unison. The children were speaking Zulu, so we couldn't understand the substance of their chant. Our guide from the Department of Foreign Affairs explained that they were chanting, "White people! White people! White people!"

"They think we're white?" Xu asked. The misperception didn't last long because the children's chant soon transitioned into a new verse: "You're from China! You're from China! You're from China!"

Giggling, we moved on. Passing the children on the way back, they were still gathered by the fence, now singing "Happy Birthday." As soon as they saw us, a lone voice piped, "Hip-hip!" which was followed instantly by a joyous "Hooray!" from the assembled children. Their salutation continued, following us as we left the settlement grounds.

In Soweto

NHB

那里的天真蓝。美女真美。

alicia

感觉主要是介绍南非,以老徐为线索,

开始没发现其实点击原图后,图片会大些,这里都是小图,除了倒数第2张,其他大点的图放在图片区了

billie-liang

很舒服~~很有感觉~~

NHB

看的我也心痒痒，非洲真是个原生态的好地方。哈哈

﹎¨瑩、℡

看了就舒服   蓝蓝的天  蓝蓝的海

bluetooth

好漂亮的地方1
要是能亲自去一下就好啦,

慕新宇

嘻嘻 好东东啊
相信第四本写真集，肯定很不错

justfun

南非的向日葵象咱们的庄稼一样~~~

馨蕾

热带雨林，就是太热，看把人晒的，嘿嘿

alicia

http://www.danwei.org/china_and_ ... and_her_team_sh.php

Maya Alexandri is currently traveling as part of actress / director / blogger Xu Jinglei’s entourage in South Africa and has been filing reports about the trip for the last week. This post is the final installment in the series.

On the occasion of our last night in South Africa, your correspondent asked her fellow team members whether and how their opinions about South Africa had changed over the past eight days. Many of their comments were similar:

In general, people said that they didn't know much about South Africa before this visit. Xu Jinglei's documentary cameraman said that Egypt was the only African country that he'd studied in school.

A number of team members expressed astonishment at the extent to which South Africa had already developed as a country. Xu's make-up artist said that she'd thought South Africa was a backwards country because of all the economic aid Africa receives from China. One of the equipment assistants said that he'd assumed that South Africans were poor, didn't have enough to eat, and would be begging him for money; he said that his opinion had completely changed on this trip.

In terms of the difference in development between China and South Africa, one of Xu's employees observed that, in South Africa, the divide between the rich and poor seems extreme, whereas in China, her perception was that the benefits of economic development were more equally distributed. Meanwhile, Xu Jinglei was impressed with the fact that, despite its development, the cost of living in South Africa remained reasonable. Further, she admitted that she'd been worried about security in South Africa before her visit, but now she felt that the country was safe.

Another common theme was the beauty of South Africa. Opinion seemed unanimous that its perfect weather, deep blue ocean, and varieties of plants and animals made South Africa a brilliant vacation spot. Xu's father, who'd accompanied us on the tour, didn't think the distance between South Africa and China would be an impediment to tourism. "America's far away, but many young people today travel to America. So the distance of course won't be a problem," he reasoned.

Many people were especially enamored of Cape Town. Xu's manager opined that she could stay a long time in Cape Town because it had so much to offer. Xu's documentary cameraman said that Cape Town was an international city, and that he felt very comfortable there. "It's exactly like Amsterdam," one of Xu's photographers insisted.

The people in South Africa struck many members of our team as friendly, relaxed and harmonious. Xu Jinglei remarked that, in many developed countries, there's a great deal of social pressure, and people are constantly racing around. In South Africa, by contrast, the pace of life seemed slower and the people didn't seem to be operating under the kind of social pressure that prevails in Beijing.

A couple of Xu's photographers said that their opinions of South Africa hadn't changed at all: they'd thought the country would be gorgeous and fun, and it was. "What was the basis of your initial opinion," your correspondent asked, "newspapers?" "Friends," said one photographer. "Photographs," said the other.

The positive impressions seemed to be mutual. When your correspondent asked one of the Department of Foreign Affairs handlers whether — and if so, how — this tour had changed her opinion of Chinese people, she said that previously she'd only had exposure to more formal government delegations, where everyone wore suits and seemed inaccessible. Xu's team, by contrast, was composed of "people like me," she said. "Despite all the differences, there's a common place where I identify with them."

When your correspondent pressed the team about any faults, drawbacks or downsides to South Africa, one person called out, "There aren't any." "At that first market, the sellers were rude," offered Xu's make-up artist, "but they're like that in China, too."

"We haven't spent enough time in South Africa to discover the faults," explained Xu's manager. "Good point," said one of Xu's photographers, "can we stay here two more days?"

Xu Jinglei on the waterfront, Cape Town


点击原图可看大图