From the Archives: Panda ‘coons
Three angles on a red panda in a previously-unpublished photo series from China.
Disembodied.
Shade.
Tails.
The Winged City
Mechanics and Protocol
The Skytrain is approaching the platform. Please stand clear and make way for alighting passengers.
Open twenty-four hours.
Gates open three hours before scheduled departure time.
Follow the signs to customs clearance and immigration.
Photography of the airport tarmac is not permitted at any time.
All flights will operate subject to traffic demand. Some flights may be combined subject to traffic demand.
“Malaysia four-one-nine heavy, make a right turn on runway three-one right, move up behind company on Echo.”
Ensure fire detectors in the front and aft baggage holds are unobstructed and display a full charge.
Please return your vest at the end of your shift. Thank you.
Passenger Tubes
Secure the overhead compartment flap properly and be careful when opening as loose items may fall out injuring those seated underneath.
Do not smoke in the passenger compartment, toilets, or when the sign is switched ON.
The cabin lights will be dimmed for landing. Ensure window shades are open and return your seat to its full upright and locked position.
As Living Space
The viewing gallery is located in the passenger concourse and is free to all visitors and passengers.
Please refrain from touching the models.
Smoking lounges are provided for your comfort and convenience.
Supervised play only.
Make your family smile with great tasting LIPTON Mango Iced Tea! It’s the perfect blend of thirst quenching LIPTON Iced Tea and the sweet taste of mangoes.
For security reasons, please do not leave your baggage unattended. Should you spot unattended baggage, contact the airport police immediately.
Please check-in early if you prefer bulkhead or emergency exit seating.
Customers are advised of a 15% price increase on all menu items effective November 1.
Currency exchange services are available for all of the airport’s destinations.
Carry-on baggage must not weigh in excess of six kilograms.
Have your ticket and passport available for inspection upon entering the plane.
Hong Kong in Photos
My four-day, five-flight homecoming marathon stopped this morning for a brief layover in Hong Kong, time I used to wander its streets and savour its sights for a last taste of the developing world before settling in for the long, dark Canadian winter. These are the images I’ll carry with me.
Skyline and shorefront at daybreak.
A view over Hong Kong Island.
Skywalk to the ferry terminal.
Morning edition.
A businessman practices Falun Gong, a controversial meditation exercise banned across mainland China, on the roof of an office tower before the work day begins. Viewed by the ruling Communist Party of China as a threat to national unification, practitioners can face torture or forced labour if caught. Hong Kong, a special administration region, is exempt from the nationwide crackdown.
Ghost rush.
Fish market.
Locals browse through a wheelbarrow filled with cheap jewelry.
The society pages.
Smokestack Sunrise
Hong Kong by train. Dock towers and construction cranes recede into the early morning haze.
Unpublished Stragglers and New Snaps
An image from a nightmare on the highway to Clifton.
Bears on a line.
This Week in Photos
Rickshaw drivers watch taxis pass by. With so many green-and-yellow cabs on the roads of Chengdu, the slower, pricier rickshaws seem to be dying a slow death.
Hens going to market.
Pigeons at market.
An advertisement for a popular Chinese ice cream bar. The face on the specimen I bought was frowning at me.
A woman sculpts glass figures along the market strip in the village of Luo Dai.
In China, all public toilets — or “Water Closets” — are given a star rating, from **** – which ranks up there with the worst of the first world – to * — which is so frightening that even cockroaches wouldn’t dare enter. Although you wouldn’t think so from its exterior facade, this particular water closet scores **.
My fluke flight to Singapore was the only plane departing from the international terminal of the Chengdu airport. It was eerie, seeing schedule boards with only one entry, corridors and concourses vacant and unlit. I wish I’d had more time to explore.
Silhouettes dancing around the one open departure gate…
…and the only plane on the apron.
In all likelihood the last photo I will ever take of Chengdu.
Laundry hanging out of apartment windows in Singapore. I had only twelve hours to enjoy the pleasures of the first world before we left by ferry for Indonesia. Arriving at 1:30am, I spent those hours wandering the airport, catching up with Will, and watching the long-awaited 300 in cinemas (our first film since Moscow).
Cable cars leave Singapore for nearby Sentosa Island.
Freighters in the waters near Singapore. ’Scuse the dirty skies, my camera body needs a good cleaning…
The view out our front window in Batam, Indonesia.
Will reading “Everyday Indonesian” en route to Nagoya, the business centre of Batam.
Workers at an Indonesian water bottling facility.
Builders at the construction site of our hosts’ new home.
My Last Step on Chinese Soil…
…I don’t know when I’ll take another.
An Atypical Chengdu Afternoon
Times are approximate and get more accurate as the day wears on:
2:26pm: I walk through front doors of the Chengdu Public Services Bureau, hopes high but expectations low. Three times I’d come in expecting to get my passport back but was told each time to come back another day, and half expected a repeat today.
2:28pm: No one in Room 203. My frantic pantomiming procures no useful information as to their whereabouts. I’d forgotten my phrase book. I wait in the corridor awhile until the lady in the office across the hall, perhaps feeling I must be uncomfortable, invites me to sit on her leather sofa instead. It was a comfortable sofa.
2:50am: The German girl in the bunk below me at the hostel arrives at random. Her passport was being processed for an extension also. We wait on the comfortable leather sofa together.
3:30pm: Keys turn in Room 203. I see a Canadian passport on the desk in a plastic sleeve and am told I must pay a visa processing fee. Things are looking up indeed.
3:45pm: Pay fee at the Industrial and Commercial Bank.
4pm: An interchangeable government official HANDS ME BACK MY PASSPORT, crisp new Chinese visa sealed inside.
4:01pm: Too excited for words, I hop in the taxicab and book it to my hostel-cum-travel agent.
4:15pm: Arrive at the hostel. Plead with them to get me on the next flight to Singapore. Turns out the plane departs in less than four hours and there’s ONE SEAT LEFT. I quickly book it, but not before being told first that I must buy a round-trip ticket. From Chengdu. A city I really have no plans to fly back to. We find out moments later that the restriction is only for Chinese citizens, of which I am thankfully not one.
4:28pm: Write Will and both sets of parents with the good news.
4:45pm: Pack, shower and check out, swapping email addresses and farewells with half-sincere promises of keeping in touch.
5:22pm: Taxicab leaves Chengdu CBD for airport.
6:27pm: Taxicab arrives at airport from Chengdu CBD.
6:40pm: Check-in at a deserted maze of an airport.
7:57pm: Last step on Chinese soil for a looong time. Photo tomorrow.
8:06pm: Takeoff!
8:06pm: Relief!
1:26am (Wednesday): Arrive at Singapore Changi airport, nearly one hour later than scheduled. No matter. That’s one hour closer to morning.
1:56am (Wednesday): Write meandering blog entry on last available internet station at Changi. It’s in Terminal 2 Transfer D, the third station from the right on the left side when you’re going up the escalators that only go down. Immigration is next, followed by a few hours sleeping in the foyer. Or maybe I’ll explore. I’m too excited to sleep.
A Weekend in the Country
On the bus to Leshan, escaping the city – still passport-less – for a night.
Mah jong.
Crowds gathered at the Grand Buddha, the tallest of its kind in the world at 71m.
Luis and Tela, my erstwhile weekend travel companions.
Tomatoes About Town
Then, feeling like a bit of a voyeur, I approached our friendly tomato vendor, initiated some small-talk gesticulations, then parted with an er yuan note (30c) in exchange for a basket-sized baggy of plump cherry tomatoes. Yum!
She declined to have her photograph taken.
Tibetan Prayer Flags
Every February during their New Year’s, the Tibetan population of western Sichuan province string prayer flags along the roads, bridges and houses of their villages.
Each flag is inscribed with Buddhist mantras. The hope is that, by hanging them in the windiest places, the Tibetans’ prayers will be carried heavenward by the windhorse Lung-ta and be heard by the deities above. This string of prayer flags, for example, crawls up the side of a cliff face.
And the shadows they cast.
This string hangs off the side of a bridge in the Dadu river valley.
A prayer flag frames a kettle warming from the sun’s reflected rays, a common sight on the rooftops of Tibetan villages.
Spotted hanging at the banks of the Dadu river, a sight right out of Tom Sawyer.
Some are hidden in unlikely places, like this single flag on the end of a tree branch…
…while others are impossible to miss. We found this woman walking circles around her stone house, always to the right of the flags, only ever stopping once each pass to gaze at the flags before continuing again.
A lone string hangs from a rooftop modelled in the traditional Tibetan style.
Flapping in an updraft.
This Week in Photos
We’re on our last day of a two-week sidetrip through the remote mountains of western Sichuan province, a detour prescribed by our American friends Liz and Doug as an antidote to the smoggy, anonymous Chinese cities we’d called home for the month before, each of them (slightly) different in name and climate but identical in character, or rather their startling lack of it.
An in-depth rundown of our personal trials and lessons learned and suchlike will have to wait for another day, but it’s enough to say that this trip was exactly what we’d needed. Photos are organised more-or-less chronologically-ish from March 4 onward and may take a few minutes to load:
The view out the front of the bus approaching Songpan.
Water’s edge, but which side?
Soft-focus egg market.
The wares at a local fruit market. Think 30c for a basket of strawberries.
A friendly yak.
Two horses startled mid-meal by a truck’s horn.
The same two horses eating dinner along the side of the road.
Fresh veggies, small town style.
Veggie kids.
Will looks out over the river valley after a steep climb.
The view over Danba. Photo credit Will van Engen.
The view over Songpan, leaving for a two-day horseride.
Continuing the climb. On the horse behind Will is our Parisian friend Pauline, who we spent a few days hanging out with before parting ways leaving Songpan.
Pack horse.
Vistas behind the riders.
Will’s horse engaging in the consumption of deliciousness. Day 2 begins.
Our guide saddles his horse.
Trees and ice.
Freezing waters.
Rest stop.
Prospecting trail.
A rickshaw parked for the night.
Two Tibetan kids we befriended in Songpan. Judging by the way they received us I don’t think they’d ever seen a digital camera before.
Taking a breather from play-fighting.
Namhi, a girl we met from S. Korea, shows the kid photos of him and his friends.
Leaking pipes.
Will and Namhi walking with the monks.
Watching for customers. Photo credit Will van Engen.
Thatched tombstones.
An open sewageway running through Danba and into the river below.
Dinner?
A yak a’grazing.
Will crosses a rickety suspension bridge lined with prayer flags. Photo essay coming soon.
Misty fields.
Working in the fields.
And a well-deserved rest.
Lookout towers appear all along the river canyons in western Sichuan province, built centuries ago by the Tibetans to help ward off Chinese invaders.
One of those towers up close, managed nowadays by an old man we found working his field.
Inside the tower.
The view over Jiajiu, a small Tibetan village we stayed overnight in.
Our Tibetan host spinning a yarn. Literally. Communication was tough.
Will climbs up the ladder seen in the previous photo.
Sunset over the mountains.
And a celestial slideshow over the same range two hours later. Photo credit Will van Engen.
Along the road back to Danba.
Pots steaming away at our favourite jiaodzi joint. We’ve frequented it five of our six nights in Danba and would be on first name basis with its proprietors if only we could speak the same language.
Rural grids.
Urban grids.
And finally, an apology to anyone who I owe emails from the past week or two; your replies, alas, will have to wait for another day. I found an internet cafe intending to catch up on my backlog and found myself blogging instead. Go figure.
Cause//Effect
Food poisoning ain’t fun, ’specially when mixed with spices and a foreign hostel room.
Red chili hot peppers.
The view from the top (?)
