Back from Suzhou

I got back to Shanghai yesterday afternoon after three nights in Suzhou, where I attended X|Media|Lab’s “Wealth of Animation” conference. The coolest presentations of the Day 1 Keynote were from Michael Johnson (Head of Moving Pictures Group, Pixar), Duncan Brinsmead (principal scientist, Autodesk), and Dale Herigstad (Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Schematic). It’s clear that there’s a huge gap in innovation and quality between the US and China in terms of narrative animation, technology, and design. The good thing for the Chinese is that at least they concede these points, and are hungry to improve. I think that’s been the model for China’s incredible growth: be humble in the face of a country or institution that does things better than you, learn as much as you can from them, and throw tons of manpower at resolving those gaps. The question I have is whether or not Chinese culture is conducive to strong storytelling and creative design. From my personal experience it’s the pride and reverence in the art and stories of the past that consume the attention of Chinese artists, and not the uncharted breakthroughs of the future. We’ll see, though.

On Friday night I met up with Ryan McLaughlin of The Humanaught and Lost Laowai. Aside from the folks over at Shanghaiist, this was the first time I had a face-to-face meeting with someone with whom my entire relationship was purely through cyberspace. I had some good pizza at the Suzhou Bookworm (smaller but more intimate than the one in Beijing) and met Ryan’s lovely wife Maggie over a couple of cheap Sapporos. After bouncing around with folks from the Chinese animation industry the previous two days, cramming down crappy hotel food and horrible coffee, it was nice to actually have a decent meal with decent folks who weren’t measuring me by how much business potential their interaction with me might bring.

My ticket for the train ride home to Shanghai was for 7 pm on Saturday, but since I was cutting out of the conference early I wanted to go back home early as well. After checking out of the hotel, I went to the train station and got in one of the huge lines for buying same-day tickets for the speed train. After nearly 20 minutes, I got to the front of the line, at which point the clerk promptly stood up, placed a “temporarily closed” sign against the window, and started closing up her booth. I couldn’t believe what was happening. Before she completely shuttered, I rapped on the glass and asked her how long she was going to be away. “30 minutes,” she replied. I wanted to ask her if she noticed the 50 or so people who were in line behind me, and then she pointed to the lettering on the glass: “Operating times 8:00 am-11:30 am, 12:00pm-5:00pm.” I checked my watch; it was 11:29 am. I started to hyperventilate. I looked at all the other windows next to me; they each had different operating times. What I didn’t understand was why those times were only shown on the windows themselves and nowhere else. Whoever organized the ticket queues must have assumed that everyone would go to the front of the line first to check the times on the window to make sure they would get served in time before going to the back of the line. Whoever organized the ticket queues must be the biggest bumblefuck in the world, because who the hell actually does that? Last I checked, people always line up at the back of the line.

I looked behind me at the 50 or so people who, like me, would have to move to another line. Of course, I had the worst, since I was at the very front of it. I started sweating and cursing some more, and all I could think about were the seemingly hundreds of cutesy 3-D cartoon animals that kept getting presented at the animation conference. I had enough of fucking annoying 3-D cartoon animals and I had enough of so many things and processes being so incompetently designed and managed in China. But then I remember that “this is China,” and no matter how loud I cursed or how hard I stamped my feet, no one was going to give a shit unless I started a brawl, at which point everyone would get out of line and form a huge circle around me. I wasn’t sure what that would accomplish, so I did what any seasoned China veteran would do: went to the back of the next line over.

I can’t wait until I have my own helicopter.