Friday night we watched the Da Vinci Code in the cinema in Xintiandi (ticket price was 88 RMB per person, you can buy 11 or 12 DVD’s for that on the street!). Although most reviews seem to be negative we loved the movie. But if you had not read the book, you would really have to pay close attention to what’s happening, and you might miss out on a lot. Because part of the movie was in French (and some parts even in Latin), and subtitles were all in Chinese I had to concentrate hard to understand it.

The nice thing about the movie is that after watching it you suddenly start seeing symbolic things everywhere. For example,why was the movie ticket 88 kuai (8 is the Chinese lucky number, so this is double lucky)? And also you suddenly start noticing anagrams: at the car dealer on Saturday I came across this “Monks go in” sign