Movie Theater Discovered!

I love the statement on the ticket stub: "The most exciting conception China since cinema began." Not really sure what they are trying to say, but something's not quite right!

Since there are no yellow pages, discovering new things here are often either a matter of chance, a lot of hard work, or a combination of the two. I woke up this morning and felt like watching Prince Caspian in a theater. In the States, this would be no problem - I just look up where and when it's playing, fork over the $8, or whatever it is now (how much is it?), and watch the movie. It's not quite that simple here. There was once that I discovered a theater here, but there weren't any movies in English. I was feeling like an adventure, though, so I decided to give it another shot.

After using baidu, China's version of google, to look up the name and number of a theater (their website didn't have a list of movies playing, times, or their location!). During lunch with some friends, I told them about my quest, and one of them thought she knew where the theater was. She used the phone number I had looked up to make sure of the location and ask about times. There was a showing of Prince Caspian at 3:00, they said, so we hopped in a taxi and headed there.

After arriving at the theater, which was on the 4th floor of a mall, there were quite a few Chinese movies, but ONE movie not written in Chinese characters: Narnia! One of these entries had a capital VIP flashing before it, meaning that it was in English. The other showings of the movie were dubbed over in Chinese. After purchasing tickets with assigned seats for 40¥ each (about $6), we had to wait until 5 minutes before the movie started to enter the theater area. The uncommon experiences of the smell of buttery popcorn (popcorn here is normally sweet) and the carpeted floor (carpet is really rare here) completed the feel of a theater. We found a place to sit and settled in the nice big comfortable chairs to watch the movie. I enjoyed the movie, only distracted once by my friend sitting next to me answered her phone and had about a 5 minute conversation in the middle of the movie!