LOO-CHI - Asia Downunder New Zealand
Bharat Jamandas – Senior Reporter from Asia Downunder has filmed Loo-Chi Hu, his life and times to be shown on:
Sunday 27th March 2011 TV1 @ 11am.
This was following Robin Greenberg's New Zealand International Film Festival Movie - the very successful "The Free China Junk". As part of the Film Festival's publicity, Bharat reviewed Robin's beautiful movie and took great interest in the story of Loo-Chi. The movie uncovered the remarkable adventure of five young fishermen who set off from Taiwan in 1955 intending to cross the Pacific in an old Junk. Their plan being to sail to San Franciso, hauling the boat across the US to take part in a trans-Atlantic yacht race - none of them having had any experience of junks or the open sea!! The sixth junk-mate, the young American Vice-Consul in Taipei, filmed the journey.
Robin's earlier film about Loo-Chi, "HULOO", premiered at the NZ International Film Festival 2008.
During September of 2010 Bharat visited Christchurch filming Loo-Chi, his daughter Lih-Lan, and two grandchildren Jessie and Holly here at his home and at the Barracks in Christchurch. Her family were here on sabbatical from Texas, USA.
It will be a beautiful little film of Loo-Chi at his home in Phillipstown, Christchurch, New Zealand, with his family; sharing with us his life as a Tai Chi Master and his seafaring days on the high seas.
Geraldine C Parkes
Committee Member
