Beijing Rocks!
I’ve always felt intimidated by Beijing. To me it’s always been a big, cold city where the power of government looms large. But just one evening with these warm and generous people has already helped to disabuse me of that hang-up. 😊
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Inner Mongolia & Ningxia
I would just like to say something categorical. I’m D.O.N.E. with this whole ‘living through history’ nonsense. "May you live in interesting times"? May you kiss my sweaty ass.
I’m sorry, I know there are many people who have had a truly awful time. Which is why I have allowed myself just this one privileged tantrum in 18 months.
I still can’t re-enter China on my visa if I leave, and there’s no end in sight. So we escaped Shanghai again to give me another sanity reset. Normal service will resume shortly.
Inner Mongolia 内蒙古 and Ningxia 宁夏 are both areas of China where minority cultures struggle for authentic representation. But we did our best to find it!
Hope you like the compilation video.
☀️🛖 🏞🐴🍷
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Minority Report
6 Days in Guizhou Province. 🚐🌦🌾
Note 1: We did a village-hopping tour in the ethnically diverse region of South-East Guizhou 贵州.
Note 2: This area is one of the wettest and hilliest parts of China. The geology is mostly porous limestone karst, so landslides are common. It was hot and humid, but we were incredibly lucky not to encounter much rain.
Note 3: There are very few young adults in this video, because many of them have left to become migrant workers in bigger cities around China.
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7 Days in Xinjiang
7 Days in Xinjiang. 🏞🌅☪️
Note 1: This was a highly curated tour. We needed to submit our itinerary to the authorities and we could not make any spontaneous changes.
Note 2: I didn’t have any Uighur music in my collection, so the soundtrack is comprised of a mishmash of Urdu, Arabic, Turkish and... Brokeback Mountain. 🤷♂️
Note 3: There’s a little Easter Egg in the clip with the ‘no smoking’ sign. Take a close look at the smoke coming out of the cigarette...
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Inconveniently Different
My trip this week is in the contentious region of Xinjiang, which you may have heard about in the news.
I live in China, where it’s not possible to have an open public discussion about these things. But here’s what I will say.
I believe to my core that a society should not be judged on how it treats its majority. That’s actually the easy part. A society should be judged on how it treats those who are most ‘inconveniently different’ to the majority.
Maybe that’s the Aboriginals in Australia; the Roma (gypsies) in Eastern Europe; the Rohingya in Myanmar; the Kurds in Turkey; the list goes on and on, and there’s one in your society too. You could even argue that the Trans Rights and the Black Lives Matter movements belong in this same awkwardly named category.
Please take a moment to think about the most ‘inconveniently different’ person near you. And in the meantime, here’s a photo I took today of a cute Uighur boy playing with a bucket. 👦🏻🪣
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15 Years and an International Border
In 2006 I was in Tajikistan, travelling on the Pamir Highway as part of a 2-month trip through Central Asia.
This week a group of us have flown to the far West of China to travel down the Karakoram Highway, which hugs the border with Tajikistan on its way to Pakistan.
There are 15 years and an international border separating these two photos. But otherwise... not much difference!
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The Yin and Yang of Shangri-La
“Shangri-La” is two things.
One is a mythical Himalayan utopia invented by a British author in the 1930s, designed to evoke the exoticism of the Orient.
The other is here, a real place in the Tibetan part of Yunnan province. It was formerly called Zhōngdiàn (中甸) and its name was changed to Shangri-La in 2014 to promote tourism.
I’m not sure why this was needed, seeing as it is home to Sungtseling: a Buddhist monastery built in 1679, and a cousin to the Potala Palace in Lhasa.
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Ambivalence in Yunnan
Good news: There are relatively few cases of COVID-19 in China. 😃
Bad news: the borders are still closed for returning foreigners, so we‘re basically trapped here. ☹️
Good news: China is a big place, so we were able to take a 4-hour flight from Shanghai and still remain within the country. 😃
Bad news: the weather forecast for the next week here in Yunnan Province is solid rain. ☹️
Good news: at least it was dry enough to take this photo in Dali old town. 😃☹️😃☹️🤯
Confinement Versus Exile
Returning to Shanghai presents a messy choice. Confinement in China versus exile overseas. In the end, I’ve chosen Option A.
Thank you for all your private messages of concern. It has been quite an agonising decision to make, especially with the UK Government’s damagingly alarmist approach. But Shanghai is my home. So in the end my choice was easy.
And after all, self-quarantine won’t be very different from my normal #ManCaveLife.
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Who's That Boy?
I first stepped foot in Asia exactly 20 years ago, for a one-year adventure teaching English in Western Japan. The boy in this photo is still on his adventure.
私はちょうど20年前にアジアに足を踏み入れました，西日本で英語を教える1年間の冒険でした。この写真の中の少年はまだ冒険中です。
20年前，我第一次踏上亚洲，在日本西部进行为期一年的英语教学。这张照片中的男孩还在冒险。
Did That Really Happen?
Today marks exactly 10 years since I somehow completed the RacingthePlanet 250km ultra-marathon through the deserts of Namibia. With a finishing time of 46 hours, 7 minutes and 35 seconds, I came 50th out of over 200 competitors.
Since then I have spent the last decade celebrating by lying on the couch eating pies.
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totaLly teamLab
We went in search of some festive illuminations, and boy did we find them.
Here’s wishing you all a MERRY CHRISTMAS!
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