Today Christine de Baan from The Netherlands visited Toodou, where we showed her some of the video clips that people upload. Christine is quite well-known in cultural and art circles in Holland, and the reason of her visit is because she is the guest curator of an exhibition in the Netherlands Photography Museum on contemporary visual culture in China. The exhibition will open on June 10, 2006, coinciding with an exhibition on the new generation of Chinese architects in the Netherlands Architecture Institute, and a presentation of Chinese artists in the Boijimans van Beuningen Museum. Toodou will be part of this exhibition, and we discussed some ideas for this with her.
After our meeting we invited her for lunch in a very small restaurant just outside the office. Literally a whole-in-the-wall restaurant, it is almost in the open air and does not even have doors (note: it was only about +3 degrees Celcius outside)!
But the food is very fresh and tastes great. Actually, the colder it gets the better a hot soup, fried rice, fried noodles and fried vegetables taste. I was not sure if Christine would appreciate the restaurant, so I checked with her before going in. But she seemed to enjoy the new cultural experience. Very brave Christine! In case you read this, when you are back next time I will invite you to some more upscale places.
Looks bloody cold in your office, Marc.
You are right, it is bloody cold. As everywhere in Shanghai no central heating, so everybody has his/her own heater so at least they can work comfortably. I try to work mainly from the China Bay office, at least there it is warm in the whole building.