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Update: I realized I mentioned “scantily clad Chinese girls” in my podcast and I failed to deliver any visual representations of those aforementioned subjects. So in the interest of good journalism, here are some photos from the festival:



Is it me, or is she a little bit cross-eyed? She looks like a Chinese Cheri Oteri.

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The jade factory was interesting, but it was mostly focused on selling you jade jewelry. We saw about 10% factory and 90% shopping area. Still, a lot of the stuff was pretty cool. A couple of us managed to get some raw jade from one of the workers, so we got a nice souvenir without having to buy some of the overpriced jewelry.

Check out the photos below.

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Below is the gallery of the Shanghai photos; I’ll post the Great Wall photos shortly. Also, I’m hoping to have another podcast recorded tonight, so wish me luck motivating myself to do that.

As far as these photos go, I skipped the normal method of describing each one. Because I took so many I just have them in gallery form, so click each one and you’ll get a short description of what it is.

The only thing that warrants explanation is the creepy psychedelic tunnel photos. They are from a gondola lift ride that goes underneath the Huangpu River. It was so weird.

I’ll talk more about what Shanghai was like in the podcast, but for now, just check out the photos.

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Thanks to everybody to pointed this out. You can see it here.

Also, I still swear that we will award a winner for the best caption at some point in our lives.

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Yesterday afternoon around 3 o’clock, while this journalist drove towards the North Street and Xihuamen intersection, suddenly appeared ahead a middle-aged woman around 40-years-old walking amongst traffic, “collecting toll” from all of the cars passing through this street, skillfully knocking on the driver’s side windows of every car, then demanding fees from the driver, and the drivers all helplessly and more or less paying the toll.

Perhaps it was because yesterday’s temperature was too high (note: at the time, this journalist’s in-car thermometer showed 45 degrees Celsius), this female toll collector had a towel on her head and her upper body indeed was only wearing a white bra.

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The feel of the city was very third-world so I decided to shoot some photos and make them black and white for your artsy-fartsy enjoyment. Remember, click on the image for a bigger version.
This guy was selling turtles on the street. I have no idea who would buy a turtle as a pet from this guy. Unless he’s selling them to be eaten, which makes me feel bad for the little guys. I wish they could find some ooze and become the heroes they were destined to be.
This was just a cute moment of a mother and daughter riding through the old area of town. The picture didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped.
This was my second favorite photo. These three guys were on break from doing some kind of work, just chilling out and smoking cigs against one of the old city walls.
This was my favorite. This old lady was so old lady it was too much for words. So I took a picture. And now it’s art. Whee!

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Enjoy. Feel free to caption in the comments.

(Also, I swear to god we will award a prize for the Ass Hair Salon Caption Contest at some point in my life.)

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The dog market wasn’t really a “market,” it was just a bunch of tables and cages set up around a big parking lot. I snapped some photos of the dogs and you can see them below.

Now, I fully recognize that being sold as pets is probably the best fate a dog can have. These dogs weren’t being bred for food, or fighting, or to be vicious attack dogs. They were being sold to tourists — Chinese and foreign — visiting Chende. And I also realize that there are children in China living in worse conditions than these dogs.

But, despite all that, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for them. Check out the pictures below and let me know what you think.

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You can check it out here.

Note: If you have a slow connection, give the site a minute to load. It uses some hella big images.

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You can see it on the Google Map below.

View Larger Map

It’s a nice area and I took a few photos, so here they are:
This is the south side of the lake. There’s a lot of people just hanging out playing hacky sack and walking around. The lake is surrounded by restaurants and bars — most relatively new, from around 2003. If you look at the left side of the second photo, you can see a Starbucks.

Here is a close up: In the far right window (under the glare, sorry) you can see the standard logo. Starbucks is pretty much the same price in China, maybe a buck cheaper, which really sucks because I have a serious caffeine addiction and I pass one every day on my way to work. It’s so tempting, especially the green tea lattes which are amazing. They taste like the green tea ice cream you get at sushi places in America.

Here is a shot from the western side of the lake: It’s kind of pretty, but not the kind you think of when you imagine lakes. It’s not serene, at all. China doesn’t do serene.

For example, here is one of the alleyways leading away from the lake: Oh look, it’s a crowd of people.

Speaking of crowds, I saw a bunch of people gathering around a little bird so I went to check it out. He was the most amazing little guy ever. He would take money from people and drop it in a little birdie bank.

And while we’re on the subject of cute animals. Look at how fluffy and goddamn cute this Chow is: Hey guys, there’s a reason Chinese dogs are called chow. I’m kidding! Well, not really. But I’m pretty sure nobody ate this dog.

Let’s change the subject. I found a little shack along the lakeside selling propaganda posters. A lot of children were depicted in the posters, not really surprising.

I think this set was my favorite: I love the farmer holding the Little Red Book aloft, which is hilarious to me. Look how happy he is to be starving to death! Maybe he’s just happy he found his copy, otherwise Red Guards would be beating him. Next to that we have the red fist smashing some guys, I’m not sure who. If you can figure it out let me know, otherwise I’m just going to assume they are capitalist pigs or members of the liberal bourgeoisie. And finally, a smoking ad! Of course.

Alright, I’m going to wrap this post up on a good capitalist note:

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The Yonghe Temple , also known as the “Palace of Peace and Harmony Lama Temple”, the “Yonghe Lamasery”, or – popularly – the “Lama Temple” is a temple and monastery of the Geluk School of Tibetan Buddhism located in the northeastern part of Beijing, China. It is one of the largest and most important Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the world. The building and the artworks of the temple combine Han Chinese and Tibetan styles.

I was going to write more about the history and beliefs and all of that stuff associated with this temple, but let’s be honest, it’s all bullshit anyway. And you guys just care about the pictures, so here they are.

The neighborhood around the Llama Temple is pretty cool and has similar architecture, so I took a few photos of the area outside the temple.

The entrance to the temple is a long walkway with trees on both sides. It doesn’t look at cool here as it would in the summer when the trees are green, but it is still pretty sweet.

Inside the courtyard you can see the first temple building. When I took the banner picture Jupiter was in retrograde and the moon was full so the courtyard was magically empty. It normally looks like this:

In the courtyard there is a big bell that a couple kids were ringing. It was kind of endearing.

There were also stone lions outside of the first building. You can see them all over China, usually at gates and entrances. Below is a picture of the female lion with a cub under her paw.

All around the temple there were people praying and burning incense. I’m not really sure what the deal is with incense — I thought it was just something hippies really enjoyed. Apparently it also serves as a sacrifice to certain gods. And it’s used to brand monks heads when they become ordained. I’m sure there’s a reason somewhere, but since this is religion we’re talking about I’m also sure it’s made up nonsense.

I wasn’t allowed to take pictures inside the actual temple buildings, but I did manage to sneak one of Buddha and some other god.

Sorry Christians, but if I have to pick an imaginary friend I’m pretty sure I’d pick Buddha over Jesus any day. Buddha looks like a party animal; Jesus is all weepy and sad. (And he gets blood on everything he picks up. Clean up those holes, dude.)

Most of the people weren’t actually inside the temple buildings. They congregated in the areas between buildings around incense and weird spinning luck machines.

Okay, time for the last two pictures. Tell me they don’t say something about Chinese culture. I’m not exactly sure what they are saying, but it seems profound. I’m sure it has something to do with how tradition spans generations and keeps the Chinese connected no matter how different they are. Or, it’s that Chinese people really dig beads and incense.

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I’m pretty sure it only snows the Chinese government makes it. They blow a huge horn and the ghost of Mao appears and if they sacrificed enough virgin rice paddy peasant girls to please the ethereal chairman he grants them 3 weather related wishes.

Just kidding, that would be stupid. Really they just pass a law demanding that the weather obey them. It works!

Anyway, here are some of the pictures I took. As usual, click them to get a bigger version.

Here is some random Beijing lady who was shoveling snow. She didn’t really seem like she knew what she was doing.

Here is a snowy road leading away from our apartment. I don’t have any jokes to make about this one or the next couple. So I’ll just post them without comments and you guys pretend I said something really funny.

I don’t know if this is a good picture or not, but I was trying to show how the fat snow flakes were just sort of hanging in the air around the apartment and falling really slowly.

The courtyard outside our building looked really cool with the snow all swirling around.

Guards like this are all over the city. We can’t tell if they are like real government guards or the housing communities hire them. Normally they are much more menacing. But not this guy. He is just enjoying the snow.

These girls didn’t really seem to be enjoying the snow so much. But the next girl that walked by was loving it. Look below.

Look at how happy she is! I never actually saw her face but I’m definitely in love with her. She’s such a free spirit. Maybe we could star in a romantic comedy together. I’ll be all stuffy and upright and well-mannered and she’ll be the free spirited hippie girl who teaches me to enjoy the simple things. That hasn’t been done before, right? I bet her name is Dharma. (For the record, I prefer Simon and Kaylee as my stereotypical-uptight-guy-with-free-spirit-girl couple.)

Alright so that’s what snow looks like in Beijing. Any questions or should I keep making jokes about Mao’s ghost? Fine, I was leaving anyway.

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It’s really good food for a really low price, (13 yuan each or 1.90 USD) and also has cheap beers. Below are some pictures of our dinner tonight.

Here’s the inside of our shop.

Here are the dumplings or Jiaozi in Chinese.

Here are the xiaolongbao (which are nothing like the real things in Shanghai, too doughy).

More Jiaozi next to our 3 yuan (44 cents American) beers.

Jiaozi Soup.

The food being cooked outside.

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Inside the furniture market looks like this:

Room after room just packed to the walls with whatever you might need. They even have the kitchen sink (har har okay I’ll stop).

If you’re interested in a shower that can also travel through time, you’ve come to the right place.

If you’re not so into the luxury of using space technology to shower, don’t worry, they have alternatives.

Who is using these things? My theory is that someone used the time travel shower to bring these things back from around 400 A.D. But what do I know? I’m just a guy who takes pictures of bathtubs.

This isn’t really related to furniture but one of the vendors had it on her desk for good luck. It’s pretty ridiculous.

It’s a golden frog surrounded by a bunch of coins. I’m assuming all of this nonsense is used to increase luck. With a high enough luck rating the vendor will receive +3 to their Ripping Off Foreigners skill.

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Anyway, after having them tighten up all the bolts, I rode it right out of the store and back home. By the way, the store I bought it from is called Carrefour (spelling?). I don’t know if they are in other countries or not. I would describe it as a store trying to be the way the Chinese imagine an American supermarket.

It’s laid out like a western store, so it seems very familiar. The biggest difference is that it’s like a combination of every store ever. The top floor is massive grocery store with tons of fresh fruit and vegetables and all kinds of weirdo meat. It also has all of the standard food like cereal and soda and cookies and snacks. But then you take the escalator downstairs and thats where you can find pretty much everything in the world. It has furniture, bedding, toiletries, motorized scooters, bikes, electronics, clothing, jewelry, school supplies, like really, everything. I could keep listing forever.

Maybe I’ll go back and take some pictures. I also need to take some pictures of the traffic that I’ll be riding in. Until then just trust me that Chinese traffic is such a retarded clusterfuck it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. There’s 13 million people living in this city and none of them can walk, ride, or drive without getting in each other’s way.

I have a friend who would love it though because he could ride over pedestrians on his bike and nobody would give a shit. Pedestrians have 0% right of way. Buses and cars are king. Bikers are like wiley jesters switching from highway to sidewalk swerving in and out of cars and running down pedestrians. And that’s what I’ll be now.

Update: Apparently Carrefour is a pretty huge and well-known hypermarket chain run by the French. I probably should have just Googled it. But anyway, it’s still an amazing store.

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Anyway, I figure this is as good a piece of Engrish as any to use for a caption contest.

Submit your captions for the above photo in the comments. McCoy and I will select our favorite and we’ll find some Chinese knickknack to give you as a prize.

Here are some good terrible examples to get your started:

• “Ass Hair Salon: The closest shave from top to bottom.”
• “Finally you can show them your best side.”
• “Proper grooming is important for any lady.”

Okay, okay. You can all stop groaning now and come up with some funny ones.

No purchase necessary to win. Multiple entries permitted. Contest eligibility may vary. Prizes subject to nonexistence.

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Anyway, hopefully these pictures will help explain. (Click on them for a bigger version.)

This is a group of people lining up to get on a subway train. Notice how there are infinite of them.

Being on the subway is like an endless hall of mirrors. Except everyone is way too close and people are giving me dirty looks for taking pictures.

This is a packed wall-to-wall food court. Oh, by the way, below is an amazingly cheap and delicious meal that I bought in said food court.

This cost me 2 US dollars. Yup.

Speaking of food, there are so many street vendors (like the one above) that serve pretty legit food. I had one of those burrito-style wrap things. It was full of duck and veggies and really good. But not all street meat is legit.

This guy is cooking meat on top of a bucket. I passed at least a dozen other people doing the same thing. What the fuck? To his credit the meat smelled pretty good. (Also, I’m not sure why his face looks like that. Maybe he’s some sort of vampire shape-shifting meat cooker. I know it’s not because I fucked up the photo.)

One last thing. When we were at the hospital to take some medical exams we had to wait in line forever — which is typical — but for some reason the lines are labelled so strangely.

Why are there IP addresses labeling these lines? And why are they scrolling past on a stock ticker screen? Honestly, someone explain this to me.

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