As Seen by TV

Is this England or China?

It is in fact: Thames Town, Songjiang, Shanghai [map].  A housing project which is part of the “One City - Nine Towns” initiative the Shanghai Planning Commission set up in early 2001.  All are situated around the suburbs of Shanghai, this one resembling life in Britain (others include Sweden, Holland, Germany, Canada, Spain, Italy, and China – don’t worry, I’ll get to them eventually!).  Thames Town, at a 20% occupancy is hardly a success, but it does make for an incredibly bizarre experience… somewhere between a ghost town and a film set. 
Only difference is: this is real.

It’s a playground for the Chinese wedding photographers… with among other things, a church based on one in Bristol, and with a price tag of over 5 billion RMB ($750 million), this didn’t come cheap.

Part 2

A one hour drive east of Shanghai (map) is Zhouzhuang, the “Venice of the East” (although they call a hand-full of other towns the same thing).  So, now I’ve been to the Venice of the East, the Venice of the North (Bruges, Belgium), the other Venice of the North (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Venice Beach (California), and of course, the Venice.

Last weekend, my company had a team-building workshop near this picturesque ancient town (over two and half centuries worth), so the night before I decided to head into the old town and snap some flix…

Qibao has a history dating back to the 10th century, when it was just a small water-town.  Although now completely swallowed up by the metropolis that is Shanghai (and easily reachable via metro line 9), this quaint little “town” has all the views one would expect of the “real China“.  Temperatures reached 38C that night but didn’t deter me to check it out (thanks to The Great Time Out Shanghai Treasure Hunt).

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.”

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.