Getting Around Town

Got a chance to try out some transportation techniques I'm less experienced with. The main mode of getting around is the taxi... they're the Chinese version of the VW Jetta, except they're called the Santana there. In Dalian, they're gnarly, dirty and smelly. In Shanghai, they're new, clean, and even color coded for easy selection. Green, yellow, and grey are all state-sponsored and legit. The free-lance taxis are maroon...and more like a disneyland ride. I shot some video during one ride, but it didn't do justice to the adrenaline rush we all enjoyed. Its definitely a full contact sport, with pedestrians, bikes, scooter, taxis, and buses all seeking to occupy the same point in space at the same time. Traffic backed up? No worries, hop the curb up onto the sidewalk..the pedestrians will clear. And if the ride isn't suitably exciting, enjoy the flatscreen monitor in the back of the seats...if you understand mandarin.

The subway is really impressive, and goes everywhere, and is really clean. Its also 3 layers deep, as is shown in the cross section picture here.

It felt a little surreal to be underground in Shanghai watching the highlights of the AFC Championship game on the subway

The coolest way to travel, though, is the maglev train. Its got one stop, and goes from the station to the airport...in 7 minutes....the time it takes to get up to full speed and then come back down again. Here's a shot of the starting time and speed Here's the end of the line at the airport

And inbetween, if you look out the window at 431 km/h (267 mph), it looks like this

Visiting the Big City

The officially listed population of Shanghai is around 20 million people…unofficial estimates including undocumented workers run as high as double that amount. I can’t begin to describe the scale of things….from my 28th floor hotel room there were high-rises as far as I could see in every direction. The shot above is the Yangtze river in the foreground, and the waterfront of Pudong in the background. You may recognize some of buildings from Mission Impossible 3 – especially the tower on the left with the big red balls….which all look grey in this picture because it was so smoggy.

I had the excellent fortune of having Matt and Terry with me - two guys that have spent months in Shanghai and give a killer walking tour of the local street markets and sites.
Here’s a shot of old town. In the center of the display on the front of the building is a large rat, announcing that 2008 is the year of the rat...who looks suspiciously like Jerry of Tom and Jerry fame. Directly behind me as I took this picuture was a nearly identical classical architecture...adorned with a large marqee of the colonel and a KFC. I don't know why I'm so suprised a drumstick with 11 secret herbs and spices would so easily transcend cultures

The sheer number of highrises is mindblowing...up until 1985, the tallest building in Shanghai was 8 stories...I'd estimate that there are over 1000 buildings now >40 stories high. They seem to go on forever

The building on the right was previously the tallest building in Asia…the one on the left, currently under construction, is taller

On the other hand, there's more than just steady high-rise construction. It was interesting to see pockets of urban renewal, where older alleys had been converted to upscale, artsy boutiques. There were plenty typical big-city alleys, with hanging laundry and garbage, but there were others that had the feel of Ashland or Cannon Beach, with swanky storefronts for custom jewelry, clothing, and cafes.

One of these galleries had a display of North Korean propagana poster artwork that I would loved to have had a chance to check out

Window washers in China are not likely nominated for safety team awards very frequently. The guy in this shot was sitting on a wooden plank with two ropes on either side, just like a swing at the park. And that was just how he used it, shifting his weight so he could get it swaying side to side in a big arc to clean the sides of the building

Speaking of safety, check out the powerlines at this busy intersection. Positioned for future growth, I guess

Eating Out in Dalian

This was my third trip to Dalian, and each time we seem to get a little better at picking places to eat. We made another trip to the mega aquarium restaurant, this time with a Chinese speaker, and had a seafood bonanza of shrimp, scallops, crab, and fish we picked right out of the water…the presentations were incredible, and compared to the US, it was dirt cheap. I left my camera in the hotel, but I’m hoping my coworker that remembered his will hook me up with the pictures he shot of the nervous eels, frogs, turtles, and sea worms that were all trying to swim inconspicuously in their tanks.

We went to a Sichuan place for lunch one day…nothing fancy, just a little spot in the mall. It was packed with locals, and we had to improvise to get all six of us around a tiny table….the food was really spicy but tasty. Some of the dishes included the infamous Sichuan peppercorn…I’d prefer to call it the novacaine seed. One bite and its almost like you’ve made a surprise trip to the dentist to get a filling. Your mouth goes numb for about 3 minutes. I’m not sure why you’d choose to add these to your food unless it was really spicy or really disgusting…either of which likely in China, although the food was delicious this day, and Matt and I both had sweat running down our scalps by the end of the meal.

One of the little things I love most about traveling in China are the minor mis-translations and spelling errors. Or in some cases the translations that are a little too exact. For example, we passed a place advertising “Steamed dumpling stuffed with ovary and digestive glands of a crab”… We actually ordered the dish pictured, and while it was hot, the sheep was more tasty than odd.

The Temple

Past the monuments, at the end of the road, was the actual temple. A long stone staircase led up to the entry building above. Once inside, we realized it was more like a temple compound, with several temple-type buildings, each more ornate than the previous as we progressed up the hill. At the sides of the compound were several buildings dedicated to what I imagine to be lesser deities, including a room with a gazillion little statues of the same goddess we had seen much larger at the monument site. The series of temples in the middle of the campus all had a large Buddha at their center. Monks in orange robes tended to each, helped worshippers with the kneeling pads, and politely asked for donations. It was really cold, especially for those foolish enough to assume that a light sweater and baseball cap would be warm enough because they though it would be a driving tour. The temples were definitely not heated, and the wind felt like a 7 foot sword slicing me in half

I took a lot more pictures at this place, but they didn’t really do it justice. Additionally, some of the better ones included a large pink UFO on the left third of the shot that was later determined to be my thumb seeking its 15 seconds of fame, So here’s a couple of the more colorful shots that dodged the wayward digit …one thing for sure, this place needs a pretty sizable paint crew to keep things looking nice…every inch of every building had incredible detailing.

This was the eaves of side building where the monks had their quarters

Each temple entrance had a place to place incense and make an offering

And here’s a couple of videos of the insides of the temples. I think I recognized a couple of stone characters from the monument side around the walls of the big temple

The Big Gold Goddess

Left the city for the first time ever - our driver took a vanload of us south out of town in search of a Buddhist temple up in the hills. It was interesting to see the housing get progressively more dilapidated as we got out into the farm country. It seems to support the basis for everyone in China flocking to the cities, and once in the cities, trying to climb the economic ladder to bigger and better cities.

The temple(s) were fascinating. Within the same little valley there was a recently constructed (2005) temple monument, as well as the historic temple with the monks a little further up the road. The first batch of shots is from the monument...our driver described the statue as similar to the Virgin Mary, but another in our party hypothesized that it was a goddess of prosperity. Regardless, it was impressively huge, and lots of interesting stone sculptures and carvings all around

Apparently this particular monument was a tribute not just to prosperity...but an omage to the gods of Rock and Roll. Check out the dudes below, looking like they turned to stone during Jimmy Page's 45 minute solo in Dazed and Confused....either that or Jason Kelly's famed guitar hero performances have already been heard and immortalized 6000 miles away. Rock On!

Xinghai Square

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First, a disclaimer that the next few pictures are a little out of sequence. I shot these when I was in Dalian in November. But as we finished our driving tour of strange oceanside artwork, we drove back through Xinghai Square, and I got another look and the monuments and surrounding architecture. Its an amazing place, a huge plaza, significantly larger than a more famous public plaza, Tiananmen square....at least that's what my driver told me. There's a ton of sports-themed sculptures, a big concrete slab that could pass for the world's largest halfpipe, a giant castle on the hill that overlooks this cool blue bridge. And its all right on the ocean. Luckily I got one of the few days of clear sky to get these shots.

You can rent a bike and go for a ride around the plaza - I thought these were odd, until I considered that if you're limited to one child per family, you really need a bicycle built for three to make sure nobody gets left out

Roadtrip: Where Bizzaro Sculptures Meet the Sea

For a small fee, there’s a ~20 mile loop your can drive – its very scenic, with the ocean on your left, and lots of head-scratching sculptures sprinkled along the way….fake mountain climbers, dinosaur bones, enormous concrete trees, even a single scene that included African women, cactuses, and totem poles. Oh yeah, and a shrek-like dude and his wife. Naked. The more I’m here, the more I realize that there’s really no point in asking why…there is no why, its China, just enjoy.

Check out the size of this concrete tree...you can see people underneath observing its man-made majesty

I'm the one in the middle

Construction Tour

The factory construction is moving along quickly, and each time I visit the site I'm completely amazed at the scale of the activity, especially that so much is done by hand. In preparation for the walk, we were required to take a safety orientation around fall protection, and wear full body harnesses with big hooks that would allow us to quickly tie-off if we were on any elevated platforms. The picture of me in my safety gear turned out pretty dorky, but as a testament to my humility I've posted it anyway.

The method of building the scaffolding by hand to enable the concrete forms to be built and poured is impossibly labor intensive. Each bracket is assembled and bolted together by hand, attached to pipes, and aligned like a giant tinkertoy set.


Imagine manipulating each of the brackets in sub-freezing temperatures, freeing up rusty bolts, and making sure you're pieces of the giant puzzle all fit up with the rest of the hundreds of other folks doing the same thing.

Snow in Dalian

Woke up this morning to around an inch of snow on the ground...its really cold here, -7 degrees C, which is about 20 degrees F. It made the normally chaotic 1 hr commute to the site an even bigger adventure. Snow removal techniques are a bit different here. Orange and green clad workers sweep the freeway clear of snow using straw brooms. The road-salting truck is a bunch of guys with shovels in the back of a truck flinging out the salt. And check out the home-made snow shovel. I saw these almost everywhere in the city. They seem to work ok for pushing the snow off the concrete and granite surfaces in front of the buildings

Heading East

Left this week for my third trip to China, and I'm finally making progress on my goal to try and document some of the stuff I see. This time around I had the distinct pleasure of a flight to Beijing that was only about 1/3 full...the 12 hours in the air still stinks, but not having my elbows stuck to my ribs in economy steerage made me feel like royalty.
The skies over the Kamchatka peninsula were clear, and I tried to snap a few pictures out the window of the plane...they turned out ok, but don't really do it justice. The sun is so low and its so barren, it really has the appearance of a black and white photo. I especially like the frozen rivers winding through the valleys. The area is so vast, it makes you wonder if any human has ever set foot in some of these places