I certainly didn’t move to Qingdao for its wealth of entertainment and cultural facilities or lack thereof. I figured that a city of 2.5 mil should be able to hold its own when it came to things to do. Sadly mistaken I was. Thus, whenever I get a call from anyone asking me to do anything, I almost always accept, because there really isn’t anything better to do.

I was awoken Wednesday morning by a text message from a friend inviting me to go see a movie later in the day. I agreed after she gave me the name of the movie in Chinese, which I assumed would be some Chinese historical drama. Not exactly what I enjoy, but the tickets were free, it would help me practice Chinese, and I had nothing better to do.

Only once I was sitting inside a packed theater at 2pm on a weekday afternoon did I start to figure that something was afoot. I calmly asked her what the name of the movie was in English, to which she replied “Transformers”. I was screwed because I had already made plans to see the movie the following day. But more importantly, what I hate more than soggy breakfast cereal is dubbing over foreign movies. I much prefer to watch with subs to get the original emotion of the dialogue. Just thinking about having to sit through an English movie that had been dubbed into another language that I can’t properly understand was enough to make me pass out. So I did. And while I was catching one of the least comfortable afternoon naps I’ve had in a while, I’ve come to the following conclusion: Mainlanders do not know how to watch a movie.

Over the full course of the movie, every single person got up to leave and come back once, sometimes twice. Chinese people must have weak bladders or something because…they definitely weren’t leaving to talk on their cellphones, they did that IN the theatre. Yes, not only would they leave their ringers on “wake James up” mode, but also they would actually answer during the movie and start shouting into their phones while the movie was on. Thankfully I wasn’t paying any attention to the movie, there’s no way I could’ve focused on it with these idiots. They were shouting purposefully to overcome the near deafening sound effects of the summer blockbuster. Hey Zhong guo ren, how exactly can you watch a movie with this shit going on? Why even go?

Finally my crappy nap came to an end with a strange surprise, instead of everyone rushing out of the theatre before the credits even started rolling (similar to what you experience on an airplane when it lands here) people actually applauded, which doesn’t happen all too often back home. Maybe they were applauding their own aptitude as being the worst audience EVER.

Qingdao is infested with enough foreigners to have a cinema that plays movies in English, so I got my chance to properly view the movie the next day. It was a much smaller crowd in a smaller cinema. Yet we were still the only western people in there. Our assumption was that people came to watch it with the similar feelings I have about dubbing, and to show off the prestige that they actually can go to the real version and understand (some of) it.

This time the crowd was much more behaved, again I assume that is because they were better educated and knew a little more about how to conduct themselves in a theater. Less people got up, and only one person had the balls to answer their phone and start talking during the show, unfortunately for her she was sitting right behind my friends and I. As soon as she answered she was speaking so loud as to over come the sound effects of the movie, we all spun around, and I told her to STFU or face the consequences. She immediately apologized in English, and we didn’t hear anymore from her, or anyone else, as everyone had heard our little exchange.

As for the movie itself, well, it definitely was the most entertaining of the Hollywood blockbusters I’ve seen this summer (Pirates, Spiderman). This may be due to the abysmally low expectations I had made thanks to director Michael “I use the same overdramatic soundtrack in all my movies” Bay. The visual and audio effects were phenomenal of course, but you’ll be able to find Hoffa before you find a plot in this long advertisement for Chevy. If you’re really bored this summer and you enjoy watching shiny robots blow things up OR you’re a Japanese robot fetishist, this movie will float your boat. Just don’t go see it in Mainland China in a theater packed with retards with cellphones and bladder problems.

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