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华国锋的中国旅行商量 - Hua Guofang's China Travel Thread Extravaganzoid


Hua Guofang

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Back in The Jing, most of this is 798 Art District, which used to be really cool. It was an old massive arms making industrial park that the artists took over and you could just walk in there and paint away. Then the Olympics came, shit got paved and scrubbed, corporation moved in, stores selling cheap trinkets and shit pushed out the real artists and the place is just an amusement park now. The real artists moved to Caochengdi, but that got shut down because Ai Weiwei had his base there and he pissed the govt off.

 

However, Beijing is now firmly on the global graffiti highway. When I left 30 months ago the only graf was in 798 and a little bit here and there that was mostly legal and done by a local crew, myself and a French guy. Now the place is pretty heavily bombed with heaps of familiar names that I think most people will recognise.

 

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This is Shanghai, I didn't take too many pics as I spent most of my time in cafe's restaurants and bars. I kind of wish that I had taken more pics now as it's a clean, orderly, interesting and enjoyable place to be.

 

I've spent the last 10 years of my life putting shit on China for all its faults and the pics that I've posted here largely reinforce the frustrations I have with the place. However I feel that I'm doing you guys and the country a bit of a disservice by way of misrepresentation. Whilst the bulk of China has some serious problems such as underdevelopment, pollution, congestion, lack of hygiene, lack of style and uniqueness within it's own national culture and character, etc., etc. However, that is most definitely not the whole story. There is a mountain of shit that's really enjoyable and interesting. Shanghai and Hong Kong being the pinnacle of interesting places and hopefully the following pics will give you some understanding of that.

 

Secondly, even in the rougher places there is a lot of interesting and fun shit. I mean the wild west may have been dirty and dangerous but it's a lot of fun and unless you're some kind of pansy germophobe pin-dick you can go to some pretty extreme and fringe parts of the world that are a quantum leap away from the existence that you know. Some times you have to take leaps in your life to experience the world in a wide and deep sense. I've taken similar steps in Southeast Asia, Northern Europe, Eastern Europe and to a degree, the US and South America.

 

I think Symbols would agree with me here that taking leaps like that leave you feeling pretty fulfilled and also increases the options available to you in life.

 

 

Shanghai -

 

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That's all I took, but the lack of pics also reflects that it is a normal, modern city that offers no great contrast to where you more than likely live now.

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Not so clear - and yes, this is pollution, don't let anyone tell you that it's fog

 

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Off the fucking scale day - again, this is NOT fog, it's pollution largely from the coal fire power stations in Hebei around Beijing. Other factors such as industry, cars, construction, desertification, etc. all play a role but the two biggest factors are coal and industry -

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We used to call that "Smog" here in the states.

 

It used to be just As bad as these pics back in the 70's.

 

This is what caused global warming.

 

The Koch Brothers are spending millions of dollars to bring us back to this point and time again.

 

Thus condemning the entire planet to death just so that they have more than enough money to pay strippers to suck the shit out of their assholes.

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Oh yeah. I can't emphasise how adversely it effects you when you wake up each day only to see slow death waiting for you outside the door.

 

That pollution is Beijing, it's nowhere near as bad as that in HK and Shangers. Plus, Autumn is the best time to travel as the aircons and heaters aren't running meaning less electricity use and less coal being burned.

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This says that the first known use of the word was in 1884.

Cars did not exist in 1884.

The smog that everyone means when they say the word "smog", the smog that used to envelope American cities was mostly due to cars before editions standards, and had nothing at all to do with fog.

That's exactly what's going on in China right now.

Dumbass.

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I'm going to dump the rest of my pics, of the last stop on my most recent trip, The Kong. Then we can argue the semantics of pollution as much as we want.

 

Honkers is a fucking hell of a town. I can honestly say that I haven't met anyone who's been there than doesn't like the place. Was originally a small fishing port that became British territory after what Chinese culture frames as an unequal treaty in the mid 1800s. It differed with the rest of China by way of language and that it came under UK control and law until it was handed back in 1997 where it was handed back to the People's Republic.

 

Hong Kong is important to China as a gateway for the mainland in many ways. One particular way that relates to what I was saying before about capitalism in China is that much of the foreign investment that happens in China is done based on HK law and any arbitration related to contracts is to be carried out in HK. That's simply because law does not rule on the mainland, power relationships rule and very blatantly so. I understand that this is the case in most countries, some countries, like China, it is brutally so and basically defended as so.

 

HK is barely at all like the mainland, it's pretty much the New York of East Asia. It's a big, international, crowded city with heaps to do and a huge financial industry. It's not a cheap place to live mostly due to real estate cost. There is little space in HK because it's quite mountainous, that means when you build you build up and thus the high costs. However, this trip I realised something, apart from real estate it's actually cheaper to live in HK than it is to live in Australia. That's not to say that HK is lowering in cost but a comment on how fucking expensive it is here these days.

 

Anyway, HK -

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This was the view from our hotel room in HK, was only a Best Western for about USD$180 a night but it had a million dollar view (it actually went much wider than the pics go, you could see the harbour at hard right). Feel appropriate to end the thread on these pics.

 

Hope you enjoyed the pics and my accompanying waffle.

 

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