Built right in the middle of a residential area, the Friendship Park always seems like a high-class park with a theme to me.
Last Friday morning was spent helping my friend to shoot a short film for his video assignment. The venue, or the formal filming term, the set is at Friendship Park, which is an outdoor set. As one of his actors, I was really having some butterflies in the stomach, since that would mean that visitors at the park could actually see our shooting. Not to mention that last Friday was Good Friday, a public holiday for Malaysian. Luckily, the folks in Kuching seemed to be quite used to people shooting films here and there, we didn’t have much curious looks upon us.
Meet Louis the Director, and Jeffery the Stuntman, another actor is taking his time off shooting photos here and there, hehe~
The Friendship Park is one of those few tourist hotspots within the city center of Kuching. Built to commemorate the 30th year of establishment of diplomatic relationship between China and Malaysia, you can see Chinese motive everywhere around the place, for example, wishing well (a modern one too, hehe~), statue of panda, Chinese restaurant for Dim Sum, even the trees seems to be from China.
I didn't bring any coin to make any wish that day~
Also, the statue of Cheng Ho is not to be missed (since it’s so huge in such a small place, how can one miss it anyway?). Cheng Ho was a Chinese general during the Ming Dynasty responsible for the establishment of relationship between the empire and the Malacca kingship in Peninsular Malaysia. The kingship is long gone now, and so is the imperial monarchy of China, but many Chinese had migrated to Malaysia after Cheng Ho’s visit here, so a statue as homage to him is like the sign of respect to our ancestors.
The statue of Cheng Ho
As for our shooting, everything went smoothly, even though we were constantly clouded (literally and figuratively) by the possibility of raining. The sun was playing hide and seek with us for the entire time, but luckily we managed to finish it before it really rained, which didn’t happen at all until that late evening.
The fish are having quite a romantic time dating in the pond that morning!
