EDWARD NORTON NAVIGATES CHINA

Edward Norton got into the customs and old-fashioned transportation shooting The Painted Veil in Southern China.

Edward Norton studied Chinese history when he went to Yale University so filming The Painted Veil set in 1920s Republican China throughout Southern China was a dream project realized.

As a doctor who leaves the comforts of London to travel to a remote Chinese village ravaged by cholera, Edward’s character is chauffeured around the mountains via rickshaw. He talks about how it felt to be carried around by the ancient transportation.

“Well the rickshaw technically is the one being pulled through the streets. That’s actually reasonably comfortable. The sedan chair is these things on poles where they carried people walking. I do not recommend it as a form of travel. It’s like riding on those things we had as kids, those big rubber things that you bounced on. You’re just getting bounced the whole way. I mean not that it’s not worse for the guy carrying it, it is but it’s not a great way to travel.”

Edward absorbed himself in the culture and learned to play the Chinese game Mahjong to pass the time away which in America can be like poker for Jewish women.

“I did learn some Mahjong. I have a pretty nasty game and I can say the tiles in Chinese now and everything so your average Jewish mother better watch out. I can take her on. Of course in all honesty my translator and the woman who played Wan Xi, the mysterious Chinese girl in the house, they were incredible. They like laughed as they took all our money.”

The Painted Veil also stars Naomi Watts as Norton’s wife who has an affair and is punished by being made to accompany him on the less than glamorous journey to China.