Chinatown in Beijing

Here's something you won't find in America: Roman Polanski.
He's in town for the Polish Film Festival and this afternoon at the Beijing Film Academy he gave a lecture exclusively to students and faculty. So my colleague and I stood in line for two hours and shoved our way to the front of the packed auditorium. Polanski spoke for over two hours about everything from his experiences of attending film school in a post-Stalinist Krakow to how his early experiences with censorship spurred his creativity. He has a dry wit and cracked a few jokes that flew over the heads of the 800 admiring, but generally expressionless people in the audience. At one point, after another one of his witty remarks went down like a lead balloon, he mumbled to the moderator, "was that translated correctly?" Yes it was, and welcome to my life, Mr. Polanski.