First let’s start by stating the obvious, my original plan was to check out all the villages of the 9 Towns 1 City project. For those unfamiliar with it, it was a one of those cockamamie schemes the city government came up with to rejuvenate a bunch of these suburban villages. It’s goal was to transform a bunch of towns into little “European” themed towns that yuppies could flock to, driving developer and thus government revenue from places that were anything but flush with cash. To figure out whether or not this plan was a success, ask yourself this: Who the fuck wants to live an hour outside of downtown in a shit stain quality knock off of a European village with your only connection to the core being a subway line that closes at 10pm? Exactly. Speculators bought up, but no one actually moved in. Check out some of that top caliber construction in the 3rd picture below:

Luckily there was lots of Gaoqiao that was spared the wrecking ball. There’s many buildings from the Qing Dynasty, and the local heritage comittee has even put plaques up on the buildings giving the vital details. The one building in the sign below was dated: 清代 约120年 that I take to mean 120 years into the Qing Dynasty, or 1764. Pretty impressive by Chinese standards. All of these buildings still had people living, working and doing whatever it is they do in there, so it was pretty lively in those backstreets (although they were afraid my camera lens would devour their souls).

There was also lots of buildings that had been molested and defiled by more mordern buildings. You could catch glimpses of these dirty old bastards everywhere.

Some of the buildings even had these cancerous tumors growing on them. Check out the close up of the one below. The only thing that comes to mind are the letters w t and f.

There was also one or two buildings circa colonial times below. Not surprisingly, the old chap held up quite well despite looking like it was meant to hold crazies.

And then came the revival. Lots of new “old” Chinese styled buildings going up. I’m not sure how I feel about these. On one hand they’re certainly better than massively bland apartment blocks and a lack of human scale. On the other hand there’s a tattoo of a midget with a lightning bolts…No wait I mean the jury’s still out. I’m sure there’s bad things about them, but the beer I’m drinking right now is making me sedate.

Finally, all the other styles. Commie blocks, the ubiquitous white tiles (Good god would I love to be the man who owned the factory that made those in the 80′s), 90′s villa style, 00′s highrise and of course the glass and steel office buildings that no neighborhood in Shanghai is complete without.

So I hopped in my chauffeured humvee (which coincidentally fits as many people as a subway train and also is painted blue with name LINE 8 ) and headed into the yonder to see these dying villages and what remains. My first stop was Pujiang Station. Well in reality, my magical humvee also made stops at People’s Square Station, South Tibet Road and several other insignificant places before Pujiang, but I was rocking out to Pulled Apart by Horses at that time.

Here’s how I would think if I lived like a communist: Toilet won’t flush. Well let me see here. Since the place is mine, and what’s mine is yours, and what’s yours is his, and his is the peoples’ and we are the people…now where was I? Oh right…I’ll let another comrade sort the shitter out, where’s my vodka at? I suppose the slow disintegration of the buildings might also have to do with all the handymen being sent to the farms during the general chaos of the Cultural Devolution and the Great Leap Backwards. However I’m going to place my bets on Home Depot having poor hours and shitty service back then.

On with the show.

Pujiang wasn’t totally abandoned. There was still some life along a main street through the middle of the town with shops and people doing a whole lot of nothing. There was also the most ramshable pool hall I have ever seen. Check out the one dude just past out on the table. Actually it was so hot that day I wanted to join him…errr…not on the same table of course. Shut up, you know what I mean.

Even though Shanghai sits on the Pacific (or East China Sea for you pedants), there ain’t much beach action going on here. Seems like they’ve used every inch of shoreline for container ports, factory waste dumpage or expo grounds. So it being summer and all, some friends and I decided to trek out to Shengsi Island to get some unhealthy doses of solar radiation, and booze.

Shengsi Island is actually not part of Shanghai. It falls under the administrative incompetence of Zhejiang Province. To get there requires a taxi from wherever you are in Shanghai to the bus station underneath the Nanpu bridge, followed by an hour or so bus ride to a desolate part of Pudong where the ferry terminal is, and then a 70 minute boat ride to the island itself. The boat is the worst part, the seats are tightly packed, the Chinese tourists don’t handle the sea well, and if your stomach isn’t sick, the non-stop Mr. Bean on the TVs ensure your brain is. Avoid the washrooms at all costs. You’ve been warned.

Once you’re there, the island is pretty fucking ace. The air is as clean as you’re going to get in Asia, and that means there’s some awesome clouds doing their thing above you. Yes I love clouds.

When you plan your trip, it’s crucial you find a decent place to stay. I would not advise being bamboozled into 2 large rooms without beds for $150 a night, as our group was. Instead, there’s lots of guest houses around, and my independence seeking friend and I scored a nice air-conditioned and mosquito free place for $15 a night. Always remember to play the student card even if you’re rocking grey hair, suspenders and a sweater vest.

About those mosquitoes, you’ll want to bring the strongest repellent known to man, cause the little buggers aren’t little at all. They’re actually man eating beasts that move with the agility of mountain goats on crystal meth. I’m not really sure what that means, but they make Vlad Ţepeș look like a punk ass bitch.

The initial place we were staying at (the scamming rat bastards) had a “private beach”. What they really meant was a spit of sand covered in toxic waste from the nearby fishing/industrial village down the way. Luckily a 15 minute walk lead us to the massive, pristine Nanchangtu (南长途) beach with decent waves and practically no other people. Yeah it cost 20kuai to get in, but it was well worth being turned into a fried tomato, thanks to the Sun’s loving atomic rays.

The food on the island is mostly a poisonous variety of seafood that will destroy your intestines with the intensity of a thousand piranhas. I survived on granola bars and beef jerky acquired on the mainland. That’s called thinking ahead people. The best plan, would be to bring a small bbq, and get groceries from the town, and have a sweet rave party on the beach with glowing sweat. Interestingly, the main cash crop of the island was edamame beans that were in fact delicious.

If you can stomach other people not stomaching the boat ride, Shengsi island is a natural escape from the evil clutches of Shanghai. Just remember mosquitoes as big as 747s and seafood as bad as Michael Jackson circa 1987.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been walking/biking/skidaddling by the corner of Nanjing Rd and Shaanxi Rd wondering like a little monkey just what the hell was going on inside a giant box that was sitting there. I wonder no longer, for they have revealed the contents. The contents of the box being…A BAG!

This isn’t just any ordinary bag however, it’s a giant handbag crafted out of fluorescent lights encased in a glass box coated with mirrors entitled Sac par Lady Dior. At first, your eyes can’t help but be drawn towards the light, as if you were heading towards that magical place in the sky. Then your eyes become fixated on it and you begin to stare, your corneas fry just like an insect flying into one of those buzzing lights you can always find in restaurant kitchens.

I don’t care too much for name brand stuff. Actually I do only in so far that one day I’d like it all to be wiped from the collective human consciousness with a J-Cloth™ and some Windex™. I do give Dior and Li Songsong (李松松) snaps here for coming up with something puts even a marijuana grow-op’s hydro bills to shame. Not to mention walking away from this work, the only thing on your mind is GIANT GLOWING DIOR HANDBANG. So it’s definitely effective to say the least.

It does raise some interesting questions about advertising and art, and where the line is drawn. However photography is more my thing, so I’ll leave the drawing to someone else.

MAO’s in the fuckin house!!!

I bet you’re calling up your travel agent right this damn minute.

On Thursday, at the crack of dawn, we awoke to grab some free breakfast from the hostel (yes this place had it all) and get ready for our trip to the magnificent Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. We were joined by a family who I guessed to be from the Canton area due to the Cantonese they were speaking. They had two very affectionate daughters, or possibly one daughter who brought along her girlfriend. Giant panda sex was not the only topic of discussion my friend and I had that day.

The ride along the smoky highway was quick, the traffic wasn’t too fierce, and our loaf-of-bread-mobile made it from the hostel to the research centre in about 30 minutes. Once there, we followed our awesome driver/tour guide as he cut straight to the chase. This guy didn’t mess around, he barely spoke a word the whole time he was with us and once we were past the entrance we followed him on some sketchy trails through the bamboo right to the red panda enclosure.

These red pandas were awesome and IMO better than those big black and white cousins. They troop around like soldiers, foraging about for whatever it is they forage, and then they go hang around in trees like little ginger acrobats. I wanted to spend more time with my new found friends, but our tour guide insisted we get a move on to the main event before the stars passed out. I came to the realization that the giant pandas and I had much in common, we’re both active for only a short period of the day, consume a lot of a certain substance (for them bamboo, for me booze) after which we crash hard, wake, and repeat.

After more trekking through the bush we came to a large clearing where the actual breeding center was. It looked like something from the USSR or maybe even the Temple of Doom. Shit, it even had a rope bridge to get in! Despite the large warning signs saying not to rock it, our tour guide made sure everyone of us damn near fell into the gravel pit below to be eaten by what I can only imagine were mutant gravel dwellers.

Once inside the compound, we came across this poor bastard. After seeing him, I was worried that we were too late. All we’d get to see would be a bunch of pathetic black and white bags of fur, passed out in their own manure.

To my relief, we soon happened upon some delightful characters, who were quite entertaining. No I’m not talking about the mother and her baby cub in the following pictures. I’m actually talking about the group of Japanese girls who were all wearing matching panda hats and making the KAAAWAAIIIII!! and kekekeke noises that their species is well known for. If I ever get the chance, I’d also like to visit their breeding centre.

Obviously, at this point there were pandas everywhere. But most of them were just eating and pooping. Kind of like big hairy babies. You see their metabolism doesn’t get much energy out of Bamboo, so they have to spend their waking hours eating as much of it as possible, instead of, well, switching diets to something that could keep them from winning the Darwin award. Furthermore, I can’t help but wonder if these animals would be so special if they didn’t have that unique coat of fur. Like if they were hairless, blobs of bear meat would they still be revered like this? I’d bet they’d already be extinct, or at the very least emasculated, having their dicks all chopped off to be ground up into some erectile dysfunction super tonic used by the locals.

Our Journey ended with a 15 minute video on Panda breeding, that was actually quite informative, despite comparing Panda breeding to putting a satellites into space and having a 1 minute looping soundtrack by Enya. I, like the 3 other people in the theatre watching, was definitely ready to watch some hardcore panda porn. To our disappointment, the big buggers aren’t really into knockin boots. Most of the captive Pandas are bred via artificial insemination. It looks to me as if this animal’s raison d’être is to be extinct. I wonder how they even evolved this far to begin with.

Actually I lied, our journey really ended with another walk through a museumish place full of funny pictures of pandas from the past, and the evil western imperialist invaders hunting them. And then finally another series of really awesome dioramas. I’m going to start searching out Chinese museums just so I can see these, I mean just look at this. A horse being attacked by a saber-tooth tiger? Looks more like the tiger’s trying to get it on! And what’s with all those white things on the horse? Are those fleas? The damn thing isn’t even real! And what exactly does any of this have to do with pandas? These dioramas and the whole day at the centre left me with more questions than answers. I was puzzled and my feelings could be summed up exactly like my friend here:

My food poisoning had subsided by the time I’d boarded that morning, heading from Chungking to Chengdu via the high speed train. Originally when we were at the train station buying the tickets, we thought that the robotic ticket dispenser was a genius idea compared to waiting in a big line for the ticket window. Little did we know that robotic son of a bitch would screw us over by getting us to think we had seats next to each other with sequential numbers, when in reality the two seats were cut between different sections of the car. Not only did I get cut off from my friend but I had the pleasure of sitting in one of those annoying seats with the back to the front of the car, looking across at two other guys who were staring so hard at me I thought they were trying to steal my soul. A few minutes after the train lurched out of the station I felt like He-Man after kicking Beastman’s ass when my friend came to inform me that the seat next to him was vacant. I blew a kiss goodbye to my soulmates and spent the rest of the morning staring into the smoggy, hilly farmland of Sichuan at 200km/h.

We were staying at the Chengdu Mix Hostel, and it was pretty generous because it provided us free pickup from the train station via taxi. Now I may be comparing apples to peacocks here, but if you stay at the Peninsula in Shanghai, they charge 2500rmb to pick you up. Sure they may pick you up in a Rolls-Royce Phantom, but I mean, it costs infinitely more times than Chengdu Mix Hostel’s service. You just can’t argue with infinity…unless you want your formulas to explode. But enough about Iranian scientists.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the city by foot, bus and taxi. Now I want to make it clear I’m no fan of temples. I recognize that they have some cultural importance and are handy for the odd human sacrifice, but honestly, you’ve seen one you’ve seen em’ all. I’m especially repelled by the fact that they usually want ridiculous admission charges to see boring poorly re-built designs that looks like all the others. Add in all the tourists, and I avoid the places like a Justin Bieber concert. Chengdu gave me some exceptions to my rules when it provided a couple of decent temple complexes (Aidao Nunnery, Wenshu Temple and Qingyang Temple) and that were cheap at 5 to 10rmb, devoid of tourists, and somewhat unique in design. They even had people praying instead of the typical junk sellers that congregate at these venues.

Lunch was some authentic Sichuan street food at a place that literally was a hole in the wall. I’m not talking smack here, it looked like the kitchen had been fashioned out of a mortar blast from the civil war. The food was real tasty and lived up to it’s spicy reputation. Although I was still skittish thanks to my experience in Chungking, everything seemed cooked properly and nothing caused me severe or debilitating pains. Dinner had us in a rustic but clean and new hotpot restaurant, because I missed out on it in Chungking. We ordered the dual pot system, with a spicy and non-spicy broth and thank god for that. The spicy broth was so incredibly tongue numbing, after trying it I couldn’t taste anything. I mean, it doesn’t hurt, it just removed all sensation from my mouth. So would someone please enlighten me on what the point of it is, if you can’t even taste the food? It’s like going to a concert and setting the volume so high that you go deaf, or buying a porcupine instead of a pet dog, or going to watch a play and the actors pull out real guns and start shooting the audience right in the eyeballs. Jesus. Maybe the whole experience is some Chinese post-modernist experiment on consumption, like “if your mouth doesn’t feel anything, are you really eating?” Anyways the non-spicy bowl was yummy, plus the quality of all the stuff they gave us was seemed to be above Toyota grade, so overall I would go back.

After the hot pot we took a stroll through this hyper-touristified pedestrian area called Jinli Ancient Street. It reminded me of Qianmen Street in Beijing, or any of the other recreated old style pedestrian districts that have been appearing like boils over China’s urban skin. In a delicious twist of irony, the only thing I find these “ancient” streets useful for is the Western modernity that inhabits them. Starbucks, Dairy Queen or any number of restaurants selling burgers and Italian food are always guaranteed. I suppose the people watching can be mildly entertaining, but if you really want to check out the freaks, hang around the train station for a bit.

Fast forward to our last night in Chengdu. Nothing says awesome like finishing a bottle of vodka while wandering around the central business district and hanging out in Tianfu square while the place swarmed with military police. Sampling the nightlife in Chengdu was a little bit like sucking balls. Not that I would know. Or that that’s even a bad thing. It’s just something I wouldn’t want to do again, personally. The nightlife in Chengdu that is. I heard it was supposed to have more bars and clubs than most cities its size so I had my preconceived notions. While there was a few clubs and bars playing music that wasn’t by Lady Gaga, the patrons of said bars were as wank as…papa-razzi. Case one: My friend walking across an empty dance floor to the bar when another patron walks by and coldly crosschecks him. Case two: At another bar some random comes up to me and tells me that he makes more money than I’ll make in ten lifetimes, and then walks off. Also some guys as white as snow dressed as if they just finished filming a rap video…from 15 years ago. We wound up going to some Chinese clubs identical to the ones we saw in Chungking, and everywhere else in China, where we met a few patrons who were quite accommodating to us in sharing some booze. It’s funny how that works out.

The next day I flew back to the beautiful bubble of modern westernization that is Jing’an and lived happily ever after. There’s probably a ton more stuff that I should’ve seen in Sichuan, but the traffic was so bad and the pollution so thick that the hours stuck in a tourist bus to see the blurry whatever it was wouldn’t have been a wise investment of my time. You’re probably wondering what happened during the daytime of second day because I fast forwarded through that part. I’ll give you a hint, it rhymes with PANDA ORGY.

I think my brain was zapped by aliens on the way back, and I really don’t have much more to say about the place than other than that, so instead I’ll show you what it looks like with some pictures. Moo.

A mere two and a half hours on a fast train from Amsterdam will get you to the fine city of Antwerp. The city is neither overrun with ants, nor were twerps a problem I encountered. I would have liked to have been here longer, but only had the day, so my experience here is best described not so much a common experience, but more the ravings of a madman after one too many Belgian beers.

Reduce

For a country that has some of the best restaurants and food in the world, there were a suspiciously high number of McDonald’s. Not quite sure what is going on here, but I guess Belgians need their corporate grease intake like everyone else. I’ll admit I had a minute urge to see if their Big Macs were made with Brie and organic beef, but alas my only time under the yellow arches was spent relieving myself.

I’m sure it was just me, but it seemed like there was an awful number of people smoking in Antwerp. And it wasn’t just cigarettes. Cubans, pipes, cigarillos, R.J. Reynolds would be a proud man. Now living in Asia (or pretty much anywhere other than Canada), you come to realize smokers make up a good sized chunk of the populace. When it’s only cigarettes that are being smoked, your nose gets used to the smell and you learn to block it out unless someone’s getting their shit all up in your face. When it’s all these different kinds of tobacco however, your nose is dealing with a full scale assault. How the slut am I supposed to savor my Belgian truffles if Jacques LeBleu is stickin his stogie up my snout?

Reuse

They had best selection of high quality beers in the world. Waffles baked up like it’s nobodies’ business. Seriously, I tried to commandeer the waffle shop and turn it into my own but was nearly beaten half to death with a wooden spatula. Chocolate, gourmet foods, more mayo and fries, beer gardens galore, great balance of modern and medieval architecture, I could go on forever, but I’ll be honest, it’s more fun for me to write about the things I don’t like.

I also gotta give a shout out to the Antwerpen-Centraal Train Station, the most architecturally amazing station I’ve ever been in. Some parts of it look like it was designed by Dracula, and some parts of it by MC Escher.

Recycle

The city shuts down completely around 5:30pm. I wish it could stuff could stay open later, so you could, you know, buy stuff when you get off work. My only hypothesis for this is…

Incinerate

…that some of the fiercest eurotrash dick puppets I’ve seen start cruising around the city in their lowered and banged up 3 series beamers, terrorizing the city like Vikings with horribly loud dance music right around this time. It’s no wonder everyone heads for the hills. Lets get Temple of Doom on their asses! Tear out some hearts, put em in a cage and lower them into a pit of molten lava….that’ll sort em out.

Your daily dose of gothic:

Below, the train station that’ll blow your mind:

When I was little… my father was famous. He was the greatest samurai in the empire; and he was the Shogun’s decapitator. He cut off the heads of a hundred and thirty-one lords…no wait…wrong intro. Let me try that again. When I was little I had this borderline unhealthy obsession with carnivorous plants. I was totally captivated by the evolutionary processes that had developed once sedate and passive members of the plant kingdom into ruthless killing machines. Not only would they capture and kill without mercy, but they could also digest their prey, using the nutrients from their victims’ corpses to grow stronger and more capable. While in Amsterdam visiting the Hortus was a must see destination for me, cause I knew they had a decent selection of plants there. Plants that enjoyed eating meat. Here is just about every type of plant they have there in glorious colour and 3D*

*not actually in 3D

Below, two fine examples of the Nepenthes alata or Winged Nepenthes. These bad boys operate in the jungle predator style. Bugs are attracted to the sweet scent of the goop inside that urn shaped apparatus and go in for a drink, or maybe a greedy swim. What the poor bastards don’t realize is that the walls of the inside of the urn are slippery and the pool of goo limits their movement. Even if they do manage to make it up, there’s a set of inward curving teeth that keep in their place. They eventually drown to death, and are absorbed like a body in a bathtub full of lye.

The Pinguicula caudata is a temptress, looking all cute and innocent like it would be the perfect plant to have in your window sill so you could talk to it everyday like a complete nutter. As a matter of fact, it would make a perfect plant to have in your window sill, if you want to DESTROY all forms of insect life that exist there. The leaves of this plant are equipped with two types of glands. One of those types attracts the bugs with a sexy perfume. Once the bugs fly down and try to do the leave with their tiny insect wangs, the other type of gland attacks viciously by digesting the bug! The insect gets stuck because the leaf is essentially fly paper, and it also curves and wraps a little bit around the bug to make sure more glands can get in on the digesting action.

Unless you’re sickly fascinated with carnivorous plants like me, then I’m sure you didn’t know about the existence of the Drosera genus of plants, several of which are below. These vicious beasts wait for prey to land on their leaves that are covered in red tentacles that SUCK THE GUTS right out of the insect. The leaves themselves also bend and curl up so that the maximum number tentacles can get their share of juicy insect innards. Efficiency + tentacles = big in Japan.

Much like the Nepenthes you saw above, our friends from the genus Sarracenia employ urns or pitchers to trap and annihilate their foes. The nice thing about these guys is that if you’re interested in seeing them in real life, instead of on your glowing computer screen like the pathetic nerd you are, all you have to do is tread out into your nearest bog or swamp (if you live in North America.) Then you can witness the glory of a plant vs. insect death match and make bets with Mother Nature on the outcome. (Hint: the plants win)

Moving on, we have an unidentifiable member of the genus Utricularia, also known as Bladderworts. Don’t let that wanky British sounding name fool you. These fiendish foes employ a set of subterranean traps to catch their prey. The traps look like bulbs with a small door on the front. Tiny bugs decide to pay a visit…and PAY WITH THEIR LIVES! After entering, the door quickly shuts behind them, and they’re stuck wondering if they left the stove on at home. Then after waiting around for a bit, they commit insecticide out of boredom, and the bladderwort digests them like a Big Mac, except tiny sized, so more like a Mini Mac or a Nano Mac, or even a Pico Mac. You get the idea.

Even though I was once a genius when it came to these plants, much has changed in the world since then, and many new flesh eating flora have since been discovered. I’m not quite sure what is in the picture below, but I’ve got to warn you, it’s probably the most devious of the bunch. If you ask me, I’d say it probably attracts insects by shape shifting into myself. Bugs love me. Once they’re fooled into thinking they can steal my precious blood as they often do, the plant quickly pulls a flamethrower out of its back pocket and BLAM! This guy knows how to represent.

The last CP that came out today is the people’s champion, Dionaea muscipula, better known to you plebeians as the Venus Flytrap. You’re probably already quite familiar with this one, so instead I’ll tell you about another. In freshwaters throughout the world is a species known as Aldrovanda vesiculosa. The traps work just like on the Venus Flytrap, springing shut at any sign of movement within the jaws of the bear trap. It lives in the water though, so it feeds mostly on aquatic life such as mermaids and nemo.

As a closer, it’s not a carnivorous plant but something called a bat orchid. Even though it doesn’t consume things, I’m sure that in your nightmares it will.