As Seen by TV

I am back from Chongqing (pronounced tchong-ching)!
I took 800+ images of a Taoist monastery in the Wudu mountains (“foggy mountains”) in the Beibei district north of the city, truly a great experience.  Not even my return flight through hell could diminish the amazing experience.  I was supposed to fly out of CKG at 19:10, but didn’t leave until 13:00 the following day… “bad weather”.  No worries however, as the verbal arguments, physical altercations, and riot-starters kept me amused.
The last couple images show the Ceremony of the Protector (the only religious ceremony I was allowed to photograph), the fog/mist mystically amplified the mysterious mood (!).

I am currently in the process of creating a 2010 desk calendar, roughly 500 will be printed and all proceeds will benefit the monastery.

ps- Happy Halloween!

Because I’ve been quiet for a while, thought I’d leak some of my Peruvian Panoramas taken during my 2007 trip through Peru (and Bolivia).  I took 50+ such pano’s and hope to showcase them one day, as they are stunning when viewed large.  Both these are composed out of 10 images, and you can see Machu Picchu in the center of the lower image.

I must also apologize for the watermarks, but you can thank Century 21 Real Estate for that, considering they stole several of my images a while back, photoshopping out my watermark and using them for marketing purposes (online, in-store, and even printed out copies as handouts when a good friend of mine posed as a “buyer”).  I subsequently brought them to court, and they squashed it.  You would think an international [albeit incompetent] firm like C21 could afford to support a local artist… but you would be wrong.  SHAME ON YOU CENTURY 21.

October fourteenth… nothing special really, just fixed up a couple random images I overlooked the past couple weeks, enjoy!

The police car is the mighty Volkswagen Santana, which since its introduction in 1983 has sold more than 3.3million in China alone and had almost 50% market-share back in the 1990′s.

…is overrated.
But I’m far from the only one… it seems that our “week-long” holiday is in fact just a glorified long weekend considering the vast majority of people in China had to show up the weekend before the holiday as well as this weekend.  Pretty damn smart marketing.  Gimme a couple days off and gimme the weekends off would be 200% better for me, but whatever, that’s China.

I met a bunch of chill people through the Bulldog Pub, definitely a recommended hangout… they do [free] quiz nights, [free] pool tournaments (I won! I won!), and decent happy hours.  They also have free wi-fi, which sounds like nothing special, but it works better than my [paid] wi-fi at home.  I had taken some pictures last time I was there, but subsequently sat on my camera rendering it useless (yes, Timmy The Photographer finally broke his first camera… mazel tov!). Plus the Bulldog is situated right across the street from the American consulate, so if poop ever hits the fan, run across 2 lanes of traffic, scale the mean wall and you should be good (provided you have a US passport).

I’ll leave you with a quote from one of Bulldogs’ managers: “in China you could be one in a million, but that still means there are over a thousand others just like you.”

…I had a blast!
[~ The Bulldog ~][~ O'Malley's ~][~ Mao ~][~ Zapata's ~]

Also thought I’d share some links for those interested in finding things to do in Shanghai:
SmartShanghai.com for a cool happy hour map.
ExploreShanghai.com has a great metro map which also calculates time + cost.
LonelyPlanet.com has lots of info on Shanghai (and the entire world).
Shanghaiist.com has events listings and other happenings.

Now I have to go see about a girl, but I’ll leave you with this dope vid I found through the Shanghaiist done only with a Canon A540:

Tianzifang is definitely worth the visit.  Not to mention only 15min walking from where I live (who knew?!).  Quaint, and in a city like Shanghai that is extremely difficult to come by.  Located between Taikang Lu and Jianguo Lu, it is filled with little boutiques, galleries, and restaurants and is situated in the traditional tiny backstreets that are massively giving way to apartment complexes elsewhere in this urban jungle.  The locals still live in these streets, so it is somewhat strange to see the little old lady washing clothes in a sink next to modern art galleries (last picture).
Tianzifang still has a real feel, whereas Xin Tian Di (a more well-known and remodeled version of the backstreets) gave way to über expensive restaurants and bars.  Xin Tian Di still holds a notch in my record books for most expensive beer I have ever bought ($20.29 for 1.0 liter of Paulaner Lager at the Paulaner Bräuhaus), beating out a 1.0 liter of Würzburger Pilsener for $12 from Zum Schneider in NYC and a $14.50 bottle of Stella Artois from the New York Palace Hotel, plus tip.

I ended up having a Long Island Ice Tea for 35RMB (same price of a Heineken) at an Indian restaurant called Lotus Land… my new-found friend is planning on opening an Indian fusion bar & grill in the very near future, so we were testing out the competition.

I met up with a buddy yesterday and we aimlessly hit up SH, meeting at People’s Square and walking east down Nanjing towards the river, grabbing some dumplings then catching a ferry over to Pudong and hitting up the Jin Mao Tower.  We had wanted to go up the SWFC, but weren’t about to drop 150RMB for the experience.  We figured we didn’t have to spend 70RMB for the JMT either, as we could just walk into the Grand Hyatt (the hotel that occupies the top 35 stories) as “hotel guests”.  We were right.

Standing from inside the Jin Mao, I had forgotten how unsettling it was to stand there and look down all those hollow stories, the spiraling balconies don’t help either.
One picture also shows the footprint for the 632m (2073ft) Shanghai Tower set for 2014 completion and designed by Gensler (a nice video can be found on their website).
One thing that I think is kind of funny, is how back-in-the-day all the tallest buildings were in Europe, then they all moved to North America, and now Asia.  China/Hong Kong/Taiwan as of right this moment account for 6 of the top 10, Malaysia has 2, the US has 1, and I hear there’s a beast of a building in Dubai.  Europe’s tallest on the other hand, comes in at #89… and it isn’t even in “Europe-Europe”, it’s in Moscow.
To put it in perspective, the Shanghai Tower will be 3.5x taller than the London Gherkin or almost 2x that of  New York City’s Chrysler Building.  I’m pretty excited to witness the birth of a crazy structure (I gave up on the Freedom Tower).

It’s a shame that it’s been raining all day, as I’ve wanted to go explore the festivities planned for today.  The firework spectacle takes place in just over an hour, so I’m sure I’ll have a glimpse of that.
As for yesterday, I certainly heard a ton of explosions, and assumed they were fireworks… but I couldn’t see/find the damn things.   I ended up going to Pudong, taking metro line 2 to Dongchang Road and walking back to the Lujiazui station (I live nearby the Line 1 South Shanxi station, you can check out a subway map here).  The clouds were absolutely sensational… the colored lights from buildings literally saturated the sky, and once again impeccable timing, as it started raining just when I was wrapping up.

The first two images are panoramas, the vertical consisting of 8 images, and the [messed up] 360-degree horizontal of 13 (the building with the antenna just off-center is the stock exchange).
Also check out the differences in clouds between a 1.6sec and 30sec exposure.  You can even notice a blue radiance on the top right, from the blue lights that decorate the front/back of the Shanghai World Financial Center… not to mention the amazing glow from the apartment buildings to the left.

I have more images (I took about 140, which is more than double the standard Tim Shoot), but these are the only ones I cleaned up, more will be added later.  Have a good night/day wherever you may be and Happy 60th Birthday PRC!!
[also happy birthday to my Italian brother Salvo, have a good one yo!]

Dope video from the crazy parade in Beijing by Dan Chung: