4th of july lovin

another old man holga shot

I just found this at first i dismissed it because i didn't like the bicycle wheel in the composition but now I like it.

I am organizing another 15 holga pics for the toycamera.com gallery.

do people think this is a keeper ?

lao ren

translates to old people. haven't dropped any film off in a while. i need to i have some to process.Its raining and i am bored so i have been digging through some old holgas shots to post.
they are not the greatest photos but theydefiantely give an impression of life in china.
this was take in the village where i have my beach house.

cranescape.

supposedly there are more construction cranes in china than there are in the rest of the countries combined. kind of like us with nukes.

Monday Morning Propaganda

one weekend in beijing

So this past weekend me and my special lady friend headed off to my beach house for the weekend. took the 7pm bus on friday ended up getting there around 11pm. woke up the next day to it raining. It rained all day. We still ended up going to where the great wall meets the ocean. It was cool. It was raining so i dont know if any of my holga photos came out. saturday night we had dinner with the old couple who rents us the beach house then we all watched the 10 year hong kong reunification spectacular. it was 2 hours long and filed with crazy chinese acrobats and singers/dancers/actor/celebrities. the grand finally being songs from the 4 kings. i think its like the HK equivalent of the rat pack. It rained sunday as well and we ended up cruising back to beijing on the 3:30 buss getting home by 7pm to enjoy the end of the sunshine in beijing.

I dropped my luggage off and headed straight over to new bar called Tim's roadhouse. Texas themes bar serving coronas and tex-mex cuisine. This was the opening party and they had free beer and food from 5pm till 10pm. This place is a stroke of genius. Why would i say a texas roadhouse with country music and enchiladas would be a sucess in china? because 500 feet away they are building the new american embassy. The entire construction crew is imported from texas. there are several hundred texans working in the immediate vicinity. I have heard they hate china hate bargaining are getting good money and wont think twice about paying $5 for a corona and $20 for a steak.

aftewards we cruised over to nanjie for a nitecap.

new advice new look

This is the latest column. It has a new photo. they have a bunch now and hopefully they will rotate them. I alsohave moved to a better page i am inside the last page intead of randomely in the middle. I don't know anything about newspapers so in my opinion that is a better spot. I think my column is getting more popular I seem to be getting a lot more letters. For those of you back in US of A that are sending me letters ( there are a lot of you ) please make them a tad more subtle. my editor keeps sending me e-mails about these. I don't want you to stop em just make them sound like they come from a fucked up chinese college kid.

Hutongs

The other day i attended a lecture on architechtural design of hutongs. Hutongs are the traditional living quarters in beijing. These are fancy rich people hutongs. They are tearing most of these down in beijing and the ones that are left are worth a ton of money. i heard ruppert murdoch just bought one for 10 million dollars.

I am takiing a lot of holga photos of hutongs before they are torn down. the tungsten photos were taken in the hutongs. these are just some quick digital ones i took before i go back with my holga on a day with good light.

Monday Morning Propaganda

fashion show

A local t-shirt shop specializing in quirky off beat designs had a fashion show to introduce its new line. There were a few cool designs i like the original ones the best though. Anyways they had this fashion show in the middle of the hutongs. no permit just invited a few hundred people then blocked traffic tied some rope to the trees. The lacked proper lighting so the handed out flashlights to the crowd to light up the models. my favorite was the disco ball a guy shined a flashlight on it and knocked it around with a broom to get the desired effect.

the t-shirt shop

The shop has tshirt featuring unique but overlooked things in beijing that all foriegners think is funny. Like t-shirts that say kung pao chicken in chinese characters. Others have the subway logo or law enforcement signs. T-shirts are high quality and cost 90 kuai. a little pricey if i didn't offset the cost with a large amount of free beverages that night.

fashion show after party

This is the fashion show afterparty. Anyone who wore or bought a t-shirt from the shop got to drink for free all night. I bought a t-shirt and made them rethink the all-night part.

handjob cooks

Gordon made a fine dinner of american cuisine. whited bread covered in hotdogs, cheese slices, chilli, and onions.

wo de lao shi

This is my chinese teacher. I have been here 6 months so far and i still cannot figure out why chinese girls do the finger thing when their photos are taken. I am told that they put their hands in front of their face to make their head look smaller.

hen hao chi

Anyways more stuff I went by wangfujing today and spent my check on some books. I also swung by food alley to get a kebab. thats where i saw these. yes people eat this. hen hao chi!