We’re very pleased because we’ve now got our own Flickr feed for 100 words – http://www.flickr.com/photos/100words/ – so we’ll be posting lots of nice pics. And even getting around to adding tags and descriptions to the ones that are there already!

It’s half past midnight and although our business day has ended we are waiting for Youdai our DJ friend to arrive with a Chinese mobile phone card! Obviously as we leave early tomorrow morning it’s not an urgent delivery but it’ll be good to have one for next time, and to catch up with Youdai before we leave.

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I’ve just had my first ‘Red Bean Fleecy’. They are all the rage in Beijing. But more of that in a minute. The day began with a planning meeting and then off to get video footage for the website (which you should be able to see soon).  We then went across Beijing to Peking University to meet Zhao Yang, a professor in linguistics at Beida (as the University is known).

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After a good flight we arrived at lunchtime in Beijing Airport. We were just able to glimpse the outline of the new Norman Foster designed terminal in out transit bus, but couldn’t quite see if it was open and running yet. We can however report that Starbucks has now arrived and is fully open at the entrance to the airport.

We headed straight to our hotel in the Chaoyang district and after a brisk unpack striaght out for lunch at the Jackpot, a Hong Kong style cafe right next to our hotel. As the food is good and they have Wi-Fi we elected this as our Beijing office for the trip.

We then set off to the Dongcheng district to meet producer Cheung Fai. He’s just finished producing Ibsen’s ‘The Master Builder’ with the renowned theatre director Lin Zhaohua. He is very keen to help us make 100 Words happen in China and not just Beijing. We had a wonderful brainstorming meeting discussing 100 Words in theatre, film and dance. We also decided to look for a real office in Beijing (any ideas please email us).

Our brainstorming coffee at the Waiting for Godot Coffee and Bar (the first time I’ve had delicious real proper coffee in China) turned into dinner in a fish restaurant on ‘Ghost Street’. It’s a long road of restaurants. Ours was packed full of people. There wasn’t really any table space left so we were almost sitting in the kitchen. At the entrance there were fish tanks and buckets of shell fish and basically, whatever we pointed at got cooked. We pointed at a variety of things, some we recognised and and some we didn’t. Most of the dishes came steamed or in a very simple sauce. The prawns were in a chilli tomato based sauce and again, this was our first time tasting anything tomato-y in Beijing. The razor fish in a brown piquant sauce were also very tasty. By 9pm our brains were feeling frazzled, so we headed back to the hotel confident that the success of our first meeting boded well for the rest of the trip.

We’re off to Beijing on Saturday – a very short and focused trip, as we’ll only be there for three nights.  We’ve done it before and know that a great deal can be packed in.

Strangely for China, we’ve already set up a lot of meetings in advance – often it’s a question of taking lots of phone numbers and making calls as soon as we’ve checked into the hotel.  I’m taking that as a good sign that our Chinese partners and colleagues are serious about wanting to work with us.

Almost as soon as we’re off the plane we’re into our first meeting, with Cheung Fai from Lin Zhaohua Theatre Studio.  This is one of China’s most innovative and forward-thinking theatre organisations, founded by renowned theatre director Lin Zhaohua.  It has already confirmed that it would like to be our Chinese theatre partner so our meeting will really be about drawing up detailed plans for the shape of 100 Words in China over the next 18 months.

In the evening, we’re hoping to meet up with some of our UK and European colleagues who are all in Beijing for the IETM China Europe Performing Arts Satellite Meeting. It’s the first time that IETM has ventured to China and judging by the amount of buzz about the event, there’ll be a lot of people there.

Meanwhile, there’s the usual indecision about what to pack, what will the weather be like (sunny or smoggy?)…I can’t wait to be back there again – and will try to write something while we’re away.

You can say a surprising amount with one hundred words, through action on stage. This was my discovery when, on August 30th 2006 I joined Natasha Betteridge and Oliver Williams for a workshop at the Soho Theatre.

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