Just put up the last gallery of still images from the China 2010 series! Clicky here to see Beijing.

Visited London for a few days with my friends Steph and Ade. Ade was visiting for a while as a semi designer semi hobo. At least that was her initial plan but she quickly got hired, so now she’s a designer living in London. This is the first meal off the plane and tube ride. Fakin delicious.

Dragon Bar.

Rough Trade. Great music store.

who wants a iphone 4

Tokyo Bikes are very nice. Clean lines and practical builds.

Kode 9 at Plastic People. It was very good, and also insanely hot in there

Drinking/dancing in strange areas

bzzzzt

Ade making maps!

Ade making photos for ilikeishoot

Amazing cheese shop

Photos from Austria, Germany and Wales next!

China 2010 gallery of Xi’an is up!

Just put up the first of the galleries on China. Head over to the link on the left, or if you’re seeing this post on an RSS, click here to go straight to the gallery. Look out for the upcoming galleries on Beijing, Xi’an, and maybe some GIFs over the next few days!

After editing this series for a month, I’m really stoked to be able to put some of these photos online to show y’all. Check out the China 2010 photogallery on Defgrip here! Watch this site for many more China photo updates soon.

This is the 5th day in a row I’ve watched the sun rise at 5am after staying up all night editing photos from China. Have finished about 80% of those photos now, close close! :]

Here’s a GIF I just made at 7am at the Vancouver airport.

Back from China! What a rad trip. Have tons more photos to blog from China but those will have to wait, as after only a few hours since getting in from Asia I am at the YVR airport again. Am flying to NYC for a few days then Dallas afterward. My sleep cycle is very confused.

Watching the free, live World Cup stream on CBC. Impressed with this stream! Aaand New Zealand just scored against Italy, it’s 1-0. What a year for the underdogs this is!

More China travels! I just installed a wordpress plugin called ‘Faster Image Insert’ which has made uploading images 5000X easier and way more awesome. It makes Wordpress without it look… backward. If you upload images to wordpress, I highly recommend installing it.

The Shanghai Bund. Can’t say I like this place too much.

Make your histories.

Mao

We went to a bar called OZNZ. Very expat, fairly fun, no other real comment. I built things with Jenga.

Jonathan the wild.

Dope bike.

Went to this insane club called G+. OK so one thing about clubs here is that it’s not uncommon for them to be on the top floor of high-end malls. This particular one had some of the most insane lighting I’ve seen in a while. The place was cheesy, but the lighting and interior design was impressive for sure.

Safe clubbing

Ummmmm

I <3 chrysanthemum tea.

We ate at a f’in amazing Hunan restaurant. It was SO damn good. Aghhhh.

Pig’s ears and some other thing that was so delicious.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Probably one of the best chickens I’ve had… ever.

Crazy tender

This tofu was so soft I’m not entirely sure how it held together in the first place

Could not get enough of this chicken

Looking at these pictures is making me hungry again. This fish was amazing.

First 2 words backwards = my name

Put an evening aside to shoot photos of the incredible lit bridges and raised roads. This is an intersection with 5 levels of traffic all held up by that one central pillar. I’m obsessed with it.

babrrrrrr

Common name here

Middle road

I tried to rent a scooter in Shanghai to ride around at night when the roads were deserted but it proved to be difficult to find.

Fogggy

Burn

Matrix ball

If you think the design of these two characters is a bit mad, you would be happy to know that they are on a lot of these air conditioners, and that these air conditioners are EVERYWHERE

Cart about

Fightre

Condition life

Massage lamp

A common sign for the male toilet

A common sign for the female toilet

An after-hours bar called Mao. We spent a total of 90 seconds in here because it sucked.

Late night (early morning) KFC. I love KFC.

!

!!

Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

Long roads

BEA Financial building had amazing(ly expensive) texture

Our Irish friend Guy took us to a dope art district. Can’t remember the name of the place anymore but it was really cool to see.

Some of the strongest video art I’ve seen in a while

Liked this

Men in black

Back of a future rhino

Finally got to see some Chinese graffiti

The art district was next to this crazy field with buildings that were getting knocked down with lots of apartment buildings in the background. It was surreal.

Sad words inside :( the Chinese words at the top right read ‘Father’

Boom

Words above ‘Ha! Ha!’ read roughly ‘I’m still here’

Remake

So mad

Guy is super awesome. Thank you for showing us around!!

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The same

Industry

Nightlife

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This was an obviously abandoned building, we’re pretty sure it looks like a restaurant is casually occupying four floors on the side of this building and has been doing so for a while.

I like the tubing shapes

Cigarettes called ‘DJ Mix special feel’ that smelt like strawberry candy and tasted like it too

A pretty good meal

We went with our Irish friends to see a gig in Shanghai. Amazingly, all the bands were from Canada, and the tour was organized in part by the government of Canada. pretty crazy coincidence!

Quite popular

It was so weird and quite cool to see those familiar logos again

One of the first and only fixies I saw in Shanghai. It’s EXTREMELY refreshing not to see these bikes all over the place, especially considering I live on Main street in Vancouver.

Briefly visited a club called Muse. Place was pretty damn big, and they had some dialed as bottle service.

Huge, and some quite nice interior design too. Too bad the music at these kinda places is always shite.

Can’t remember his name, but the dude in orange helped organize the show and is a key player in the Shanghai music and culture industries. Apparently he is on CNN’s top 20 most influential people in Shanghai list.

Our friend was drking this. It’s 2.5% stuff, quite delicious, but the can is really what sold me on it

A club called Logo that was playing hipster music without the hipsters (really fun to dance to!). We also heard dubstep here a few nights before. Great spot.

DELLLLLL

Our last night in Shanghai we went to a club called Shelter that everyone unanimously said was the best club in Shanghai. But it was closed. Gutted. Really wanted to see this place.

Tried this stuff. It wasn’t good.

It doesn’t really show up here, but the way the suitcase on the left was photoshopped in was freakin hilarious.

Ummm, sound advice.

Flight from Shanghai to Xi’an

Bus to plane

First meal in Xi’an at the airport. Salted meat. So good.

Quit smoking early is good for your health.

Xi’an!

Red Bull ad

Xi’an is as polluted as I remember it being 10 years ago which is a shame. Still a very nice city though. The people here are so happy especially compared to Shanghai, and the pace of life is much slower (and more manageable).

Flavours you definitely won’t get back home. Crab chips.

Casual dining. This whole meal for both of us came to less than $CDN 10.

New slippers

If I was famous in China I would definitely seek out an instant noodle endorsement deal. Those guys must make bank.

All fruits need words on them

Real not real parrot

I keep obsessing over the tubing on these bikes

jfoisj

Cat

We are staying at the Xi’an Art Academy. There is definitely some amazing talent here.

This piece was particularly interesting

Sculpture lots. On the left is David, our friend from our Chinese art history class at UBC.

Stiar

Really like that one too

Graduation day

Why not move your art around like this

Congratulations on graduating, Xi’an students!!

Building safety here would make Westerners freak

Side roads

Xi’an City Wall

Little taste of home

Yes, a f’in merlion

“I wish my wife was this dirty”

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Stick your head out and check the view

Picturesque eh? Now look a little closer at the person walking…

Random dude, butt naked casually strolling down the street. I’m glad even the locals thought this was weird.

Contrast

Next

We rented bikes and rode the city wall which is the tourist thing to do here. It was a lot of fun.

Gavin this picture’s for you

Then we ate a meal all the locals talked about called Pao Mo. Shredded bread soaked in mutton stew. None of us had ever eaten anything like this before. You have to take the dough on the left and crumble it with your hands at the dinner table. It actually takes quite a while and is rather tiring. It’s pretty interesting to see all the locals sitting around the table shredding bread into a bowl at a nice restaurant. Don’t you go to nice restaurants so you don’t have to prepare the meal yourself? Tradition > Logic. Really interesting.

This was pretty good. We enjoyed it but we like the hot pot here more.

A few hours later we were hungry again. Don’t hate me for loving KFC this much. I’m half chinese. I love fried chicken ok! KFC in China is twice as big as Macdonalds, it’s everywhere. Look at these awesome bikes.

Lots of photos in this post. Took forever to upload them in Wordpress’ tedious format but here we go!

The photo above is of a big Xiao Long Bao with a straw in it so you can suck out the soup. It was rather strange and pretty delicious.

Obamao

I’ve never really appreciated these insects from up-close before. They are so cool looking.

China is amazing if you’re into bikes. The bike culture here is totally next level, and you see some really weird and funny stuff.

!!!!!!

We visited Taikang Lu which is a touristy district that is kinda like a cross between Vancouver’s Yaletown and Gastown. Lots of art and photo galleries (lots more photo than art galleries actually) and some pretty cool photo mini museums. Tons of nice bars and whatnot too. I didn’t really enjoy myself there because it was such a tourist trap, but it’s really cool to see what the young people of Shanghai are doing with their surroundings, setting up all these rad stores.

Dawggers

Love the tubing on these bikes

Road safety

Red Bull here is owned by a different corporation than the one in Austria, so even the name is different.

Gambring

ATM

Mad textures on some of these buildings

I take

Appropriate

We went to this really dope antique market at Dongtai road. Bought some wicked stuff and befriended some locals who recognized and were interested in Vina’s Olympus OM1 camera. I love this place, and there’s some really cool spots around it too.

V

Vina shooting photos in the alleys where people live along Dongtai market.

Cycle motivation

In my last blog post I talked about these and promised a picture, here it is!! Hand warmers on your handlebars for when it gets cold. Brilliant.

In China you can smoke everywhere. Even the hotel room provides an ashtray with matches, requesting only that you don’t smoke on the bed and light the whole place on fire. The smoking culture here is insane. Everyone smokes, and cigarettes average about $3CDN a pack and can get cheaper too. Vina and I have temporarily become smokers.

Our local restaurant spot near the hotel. In our opinion this is the best restaurant in Shanghai. About $1CDN a plate and frakin delicious.

We hit up the ‘bird and insect market’ which is close to the the Dongtai antique market. This place is INSANE. If you are ever in Shanghai do not miss coming here. So the story with these crickets is that cricket fighting has always been a hobby to the Chinese, so they’ll come to places like this market to survey crickets (sometimes with a  magnifying glass) to bring out and fight. I know they kinda look dead in this photo but they were very much alive. The whole market is absolutely crazy, it’s like the Chinese version of a pet store.

All those baskets have crickets in them. The noise was absolutely deafening.

Awesome ad brah

Lots of birds here too. I shot mostly DSLR photos here so I don’t have many photos from my Canon S90 to post here, but we took some video too so hopefully will be able to upload those soon! The bird and insect market was definitely one of the highlights of the trip for me. So bizarre.

Ate food at some nearby local spots. Get yo grease on.

Windows failing everywhere

So Macdonalds here has chicken wings, and they are f’in awesome. The middle ones are by far the best tho.

Shanghai

Expo advertising is everywhere, they are pushing it incredibly hard

After going to the fake market

CAT

Another type of Red Bull can. The other one is the uncarbonated golden can that you can find typically in Asia, but I’m not sure what this one is like. Gonna try it the next time I see it, but I think it’s just like the other one but with EXTRA quantities of Red Bull.

Denise, Vina’s friend from Vancouver whose been showing us around Shanghai. She’s fantastic, thank you Denise!!

We hit this club called M3 where there were sharks. This place was swanky in a shitty way and very gangster style. We got out of there quick. Not fun.

Guo Tie dumplings at the best restaurant in Shanghai. This dish is like a tongue orgasm.

Finally we hit up the much talked about Expo. It was like an architectural amusement park.

Really cool transport car things that were silent (electric) which made them even more futuristic seeming.

Lots of tourist groups here, and since everyone in the group wears the same hat for identification, it was pretty fun to see all the hat fashion going on.

walker

The Chinese pavilion, which was quite enormous. They all have things to see inside them but we only went into 3 pavilions because the lineups were long and Vina and I just don’t do lineups, so instead we walked the entire area and browsed the outsides of every pavilion. It took 8 hours to see them all. It would probably take 2 or 3 full days to see the insides of every one.

Some surprising, rad stuff to see

Scale was crazy at the expo. They poured money into this place and it showed.

The same giant funnel as the picture above this. Really crazy.

Some companies have got to research their english names better

But some english names are so charming it’s best that they don’t research them too much

METAL BEARS!!!

AAAAHHHHHHH

I love these bears

Hangin’ on

Food court stylin

Flabs

Food court cards

Local expo

The Singapore pavilion which was actually quite interesting looking and very popular. They did way better than I was expecting with this, proud!

hmmm

The Australian pavilion, the first one we went into and only because the line moved fast. It sucked. We bounced quick.

This orange light was about the coolest part of the Australian pavilion.

Washrooms here are a litttle different from Canada. Stools are common. Get on squattin.

Denmark pavilion was nice because…

You could ride bikes around that thing! So fun looking!!! Too bad the lineup was long so we didn’t do it, but yeah.

FASHION

Sucker for shapers

Line walking

Canada pavilion

This was definitely one of the nicer pavilions in the place and there were lots of people checking this place out. Interesting integration of metal and wood. Stoked.

Jia Na Da

Brazil pavilion had a nice exterior.

Eating KFC

Make square fun time

Last photo. Vina took this of me in the UK Pavilion which is called the Seed Cathedral. This pavilion has garnered a fare amount of attention on the blogosphere so we were eager to see it, and even with all the hype it completely blew us away. It would not be an exaggeration to call this a masterpiece. It’s fucking brilliant, and in my opinion a very obvious highlight of the whole Expo. We spent a lot of time both inside and outside, just staring at this incredible piece of art/sculpture/building. Totally amazing. Shot lots of photos of it on the DSLR. :D

That’s it for now. We want to shoot photos of bridges today (I’m really obsessed with the expressways and bridges here, they’re so beautifully constructed) so that should be fun. Also, we went clubbing last night after the Expo but our cameras ran out of batteries so we couldn’t document it, but it was such an eye-opening experience. Dubstep in Shanghai, who would’ve thought. Should be going out tonight so hopefully I’ll have some  more photos of the very vibrant nightlife scene in the next post!

Boom! Internet finally working, here’re some pics from our first day in Shanghai. This be our hotel lobby.

Our hotel elevator is interesting. It smells so bad but it has really cool wallpaper and the buttons are camouflaged.

First meal at a spot near our hotel.

Mmmmmmm.

I love Shanghai fashion.

It’s a given that millions of people rides bikes here, and they have the most interesting ways of dealing with nature. When it rains, people don these ponchos and wear them in this manner, protecting their head and bodies from the elements really efficiently. Our friend Jonathan told us that in the winter they literally glue giant mitts to their handlebars to keep their hands warm. The next time I see a bike with them on I’ll take a photo for you guys to see. It’s so rad.

?

This is the cell phone I bought to use in China. $30CDN and the SIM card was bought from a roadside magazine stall at 10pm. It’s no secret that Canada’s telecom service is horrible, but this really emphasizes just how backward we are. Also, my phone has awesome english. I can’t wait to ice it out with fake jewels and trinkets, it’s gonna look so ridiculous.

Apartment buildings everywhere.

Stripe that outfit.

Jonathan brought us to a mall where you can get clothes made to fit for absolutely ridiculous prices. Right now I’m having a suit, a jacket, a blazer, and a custom-designed coat made for my body. Can’t wait to see how they turn out.

Sticky.

The glasses with the white border on the left are so insane. It was hard (easy) not to buy them.

Afterward we all went for Jonathan’s birthday dinner. This was taken underneath an expressway with blue lights on the entire underside. It lit all the roads with this intense blue glow. So beautiful.

Jonathan is a wild man, and he got some wild gifts from his Swedish friends.

Jonathan! He’s been looking after us so well from the second we arrived. Thank you sir.

Then we went clubbing, which was like a sociology lesson. First of all, every table had cups with dice in them because people here love to play drinking games. Secondly, clubbing is a pretty newish idea to China, so they have different ways of doing things. People here don’t seem to dance as much, preferring instead to socialize on the couches and play drinking games. Also, there seems to be a ton of emphasis on the show, so this club was decked out with way more lights and spectacle than needed. This is the first and only club I’ve been to in China, so my opinion on things will probably change as we go to other different ones with different crowds. But this was a pretty eye-opening experience for me, I didn’t expect a bunch of these things.

Haha, psyched.

Drank

PARTY HARRRD!

Alright, enough blogging. Going outside to take photos :D