Movie Theater in China

So last weekend I decided to get the girls out of the house on a rainy Sunday afternoon and take them to the movies. I had myself all geared up for a complex and frustrating process, imagining that only in China could a simple trip to the movies be anything but simple.

I have to admit to being pleasantly surprised. I knew what movie I wanted to take them to... they had seen a preview on one of their 'corner video store' DVDs for 'Monsters vs. Aliens'.

My first challenge, which I expected to be complex was to figure out where it would be showing, since all the theater's websites are in Chinese. There's an expat focused website that had an article/review of the movie and included a list with links to the websites of the theaters showing the movie. It also included links to reviews of the theaters themselves.

The review of one of the theaters said that it was the only theater in town that the reviewer knew of that served salty popcorn as opposed to sweet popcorn. You may not know this about China, but popcorn here - almost all of it - is sweet... think kettle corn, but not quite the same. It was very disconcerting when I first popped some 'corn into my mouth at the FIFA Women's World Cup shortly after arriving in China to taste sweet corn instead of salty popcorn.

So, despite the fact that it was not the closest and most convenient place to see the movie, it was where we were going... because for me you can't watch a movie in the theater without popcorn, and that popcorn must be salty, not sweet.

Now, I needed to figure out show times, and the theater's website was all in Chinese. I got lucky though... They had little pictures of the movie poster next to each showing and the times were in standard numbers. 3:05pm showing in Xintiandi - perfect.

So we trek across town, about 40 minutes, to the theater. It's in a mall in a nice retail development in Shanghai. We buy tickets at the ground floor ticket booth to the tune of $14 USD each. It turns out this movie was a little more expensive to see as it was being shown in 3D. When I purchased our tickets (and provided another $14 USD each for deposit on our 3D glasses) I was shown a layout of the theater with some seats occupied and others free. It turns out in China the movie theaters have assigned seating. So on the spot I pick 3 seats in the middle of the theater both front to back and side to side (a personal preference/peeve of mine - I need to be as close to the center of the theater as possible). When you get to the theater there is an usher that shows you to your seats.

So I only have a single data point - since we buy most of our movies from the corner video store for $0.87 USD about 2 weeks after they come out - but data point seems to indicate that the movie going experience in Shanghai is a little more expensive and a little more orderly than in the US.

I did notice that the theater was 80% empty... I imagine it's hard to compete with the $0.87 USD movie stores on the corner when you are charging $14 USD... or perhaps there was not a lot of local interest in 'Monsters vs. Aliens'... but my kids loved it!