As Seen by TV

Just got back from 5 days of shooting a seminar in Hangzhou, a picturesque city just over an hours train from Shanghai.

We were staying in a hotel in the tea village of Meijiawu, where the seminar was taking place. Don’t let the night exposures fool you, it was dark as hell… all of these images were taken with 15-200sec exposures.

For lunch/dinner we had some interesting stuff, it was my first time to eat goat, pig heart + tongue, and bullfrog… not to mention the regular stuff like river eel, pig intestine, tree fungus (delicious!!), and cooked chicken blood.

On one of the last evenings we were treated to a… interesting show which was located on a piece of land that can only be described as a Chinese Disneyland.  Fake mountains, over-priced “authentic” food, and all the staff walking around in traditional wardrobe from the various dynasties.  The show was pretty ridiculous… although it was nice to see a whole stage filled with beautiful Chinese girls belly-dancing followed by Indian-style dancing in outrages costumes (everything from full-on warrior battle gear to girls dressed as butterflies and lily pads).  I will also never forgive my colleague Kevin (aka “King Jian Ren”) for telling me not to bring my camera along!  Thanks jian!

 

The post title comes from the Chinese saying: 上有天堂，下有苏杭 which translates to “Heaven above, Suzhou and Hangzhou below.”

This is the first post in my “Mission: Lunch” series, which will showcase some of the lunches I have had the [mis]fortune of having over whichever given week.  This was a pretty damn good week… although I have to admit that some of these meals were prior to this past week, hopefully you forgive me.  Also forgive the iPhone camera quality…

First, a little background information… I work in an office building called the Huai Hai Tower located on Ren Min Road and (you guessed it) Huai Hai Road, in south Huangpo.

View SHlunch47 in a larger map.

The first two images are from lunch a couple weeks back, when it was still warm outside.  Kevin and I hit up a hole in the wall, this is ALL they served… tangyaun.  With 2 choices, vegetable or meat.  The meat ones were absolutely delicious, simliar to a dumpling with a pork gravy inside.  While the vegetable ones looked kinda like tea leaves mixed with crude oil, and were sweet as hell (*update*, wikipedia has me to believe they were actually filled with a “ground black sesame seeds mixed with sugar and lard“).

The next two images are from another little place located on Yunnan South Road, just off of Ren Min Road…  authentic spicy chicken hotpot (notice the chicken foot!).

While the last two are from a random restaurant Kanishk and I randomly walked into (for dinner, hence the beer!) somwhere around Linping Road in Hongkou.   It was filled with locals, so you know it had to be good.  There wasn’t a thing we ordered that wasn’t spicy (besides the rice), I’d have to say that the Hunan-style cuisine is by far my favorite.  The last picture is of one of my favorite dishes, consisting of green beans that have a light crunch to them, cooked with chili peppers and mixed with shredded meat (in this case pork, but shrimp & beef are also used).

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!
So, today marks the last year of my 20’s… which has had many ups and downs, but I couldn’t find myself in a better place then where I am now.
As a gift to myself, I’ve spent the entire day nestled in HTML renovating my core website TIMVAN.com.  Check it out, but if you’re reading this you know this is where the juicy stuff is.

Thanks Mom & Dad for having me!

So I just got back from lunch with 2 colleagues, and not only did we have one of my favorite types of meals in the world, but it was probably one of the best too… Chinese hot pot!  The restaurant is called 重庆小天鹅 and is located right by my office.  Of course I had to order the spicy edition, and it was pretty damn spicy.  Ooh man, just looking at these pictures wants me to go back for seconds, thirds, and fourths.  Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

We (they) ordered lamb, pork, ball variations (fish ball, shrimp ball, and beef ball), 3 vegetable baskets (including a mushroom assortment and 2 others including things like lettuces, cabbages, sweet potato, seaweed, tofu, bean sprouts, and lotus root).

There was also a “sauce bar”, where you took a bowl and made your own concoction of a dipping sauce… with bases like satay, beef, XO, soy, peanut, chili, etc… and then toppings like fresh garlic, chives, coriander, chillies, and crushed peanuts.  I’m not even naming half, because I’m actually just listing the things I recognized.  I made two variations for myself, a spicy beef sauce mixed with fish sauce, coriander, garlic, and chillies.  And the second was a sweeter satay with peanuts and chives.  I’m still drooling.

 

Here are some examples of what I’ve been doing as part of my job here at HCD Global.  The first 4 were taken during a seminar with Amitava Chattopadhyay an expert on branding and market strategy at Oppo headquarters in Dongguan.  The final 6 are from a breakfast meeting at the Moller Villa Hotel here in Shanghai, with Greg Thain an expert in emerging markets and Chairman/Founder of IMSG.

Yes I know, not at all that exciting, and not particularly subject matter that strikes my fancy, but very informative meetings none-the-less (even for an artiste like myself!).  The conference room at the Moller Villa was especially difficult to shoot with the morning sun blasting through the windows as well as all the random mirrored tiles along the ceiling that bounced my flash in every direction.

 

So, you should remember this image I took a couple weeks ago:

I was heading back from lunch towards the office (building on the far left with the blue windows, in the image below), when I noticed some additions to that exact same wall…

[click to enlarge]

(from left to right) HURI; PASSION; AOK; ???; ??? (looks like 2 people messed up or got dissed); ??? (dunno what the black/purple piece says, but personally I love straight lines); BATING (from female graf artist TING);  NDVA?; HURI.
Other notable names include SENF; SNOW; LAMO.

Courtesy of the the Shanghainese Oops Crew (their flickr page).

I’ve seen only a handful of tags these past 9 weeks in Shanghai, and that’s about it in regards to graffiti.  Which is a completely different scene coming from New York City, but I was refreshed to see these pieces along Dongqinglian Road (between Qinglian & Luxiangyuan).  I’m curious how long until the Shanghainese buff patrol…
Also, I’d love to hear from anyone who knows websites to any of these artists (as I would be happy to link them), or could fill me in on the names I’m missing out on.  Cheers.

For Tanley’s day-off we visited Jing’an Temple by day and then took the Line 2 subway (sorry for the bad pic, but someone was really asking what they looked like) over to Pudong and hit up Century Park by night…

 

I met up with a friend in Tianzifang, he wanted to know more about night shooting as a week prior I had persuaded him to buy a tripod.

For those of you who don’t know Tianzifang (and missed my last post about it, which has many more pictures) it’s a block of little alleyways filled with small galleries, shops, and restaurants located between Taikang Road & Jianguo Middle Road very quaint and beautiful.
Once again you can see I’m messing around with my external flash .
T-shirt by Ryan Sullivan