Monthly Archives: May 2008

misled

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I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. But first things first… Allow me to introduce Shen Zhouyu 申周玉, 60year-old pensioner from Ürümqi 乌鲁木齐, who likes riding his bike all around China: We battled it out taking pictures of each other – what a charming guy though! We exchanged numbers and became friends. I […]


my side of the road

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Sorry for being such a slack arse about posting these last couple of days, but things had gotten a bit chaotic on the way. – more petty excuses tomorrow – Right now though, we’re still on May 30th, and it’s the weekend around Children’s Day: …kids everywhere, some dressed up… …others just having a good […]


night music

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Luckily I didn’t get sick last night, otherwise I would have had to go to the place where many chose to rather relieve themselves outside: – Only the very brave and the desperately needy would ever go in there: A place to be avoided. … So anyway, I was really happy to leave this hell […]


a hard pass

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Who could have thought that today would turn out to be this hard? … First I woke up at 5 in the morning and had to run straight to the loo. – There is just not much glory in the aftermath of an unsanitary meal. – I was eventually able to go back to sleep, […]


same old story: rain to drizzle

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I put on my jacket today. Unfortunately I had to, first of all because it was cold, and second because it was raining: Rain can be a pain. But it can also be quite cozy to shake off the water and sit down in a small restaurant with a stove heating up the room: When […]


two hundred by two hundred

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When I had come back from dinner late last night, and started going through the 300+ photographs I had taken in the mountains (most of them with yaks on them), I realized that there was no way that I would continue walking and post a journal today. So I stayed. Sometime in the afternoon I […]


the white yak, the majestic, and the worm

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A couple of friends took me out to the mountains west of the town: It was a one-hour drive up to the valley, and when we got there, I was just… …so overwhelmed… …and – for once – at a complete lack of words: Awesome. … Tibetan regions have a number of animals that you’re […]


“I can’t hear you!”

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I felt like I was really up in the mountains today: …the green valley meandering through the barren rocks… Once I climbed up on one of those rocks, mainly because I had noticed a small pavilion up there: Some kids were playing a board-game using pebbles and shards of glass, and I sat down for […]


a gift from Grandpa Li

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Ever since Lanzhou, the road has constantly risen up to pretty high altitudes. Now I’m at 2200m above sea level again (the last time was around Scandinavia). Well, the air is fresh and the sky is very clear up here: Potatoes were for lunch, and then I drank tea and had a very enjoyable discussion […]


phenomena

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My hotel sucked – big time. I think the least I could have expected was some warm water in the shower. Grrrrr… So anyways I walked around the place today, went to the market: Looked here and there: Waited for things to come into place: Then I went to a certain Qinglongshan 青龙山: Some folks […]


new people

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From what I could see on the map, Yongdeng seemed to be the only larger settlement around. I figured it might be a good idea to get there before nightfall and then take a full day off tomorrow, staying in a hotel with a proper loo and a hot shower for a change. So this […]


dizzy in pink

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What a bad night: not only had there been at least a dozen fat flies buzzing around my room, using my nose as a landing strip – but I had also had some obnoxious neighbors next door who liked to drop in whenever they pleased to take a look at the funny foreigner. Damn. So […]


good food poor loo

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See the green thing I’m crossing through on the map? Well, it’s a long fertile valley, just like an oasis… …embedded between the arid mountains in the east and in the west: One of the local specialties they grow here is a kind of rose-bud. …too bad they had already finished harvesting almost all of […]


primal scream

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I safely got out of the power plant and found the river again: An easy day with fair weather. One could have said a boring day. Sometimes I would run into people outside playing games: So far so good. Until at some point my GPS unit decided it was a good time to break down. […]


for what they are

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Walking didn’t go so bad today. One of the first things I saw once I turned into a small street: Person on the left working on a power line, person on the right gently floating along in a German luxury car. I guess both people on this picture must be kind of used to pulling […]


one would dream (Yellow River hop 2)

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Anxiety caught up with me again; no sleep until five in the morning. I was pretty wrecked when I dragged my stuff through a place called Lanzhou Waterwheel Exhibition Park 兰州水车博览园 on the banks of the Yellow River: A couple of things about my outfit have changed by the way, I’m wearing more khaki now […]


last one with a zero

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The world is out there: And tomorrow is the day.


souvenirs

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In the People’s Republic of China, if you want to photograph cultural relics (like a statue or a mural in a temple), you will almost always need a permission from the authorities (1 good thing, 4 nice people, 1 bad thing, and a possible solution to a problem). So for that reason, I armed myself […]


pure love

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My ticket was made out for May 5th at 08:10 in the morning, and I had a full day left before that. So today, I took another long walk around town to pass the time and get used to my new shoes: I had originally set out to find a post office and mail photographs […]


what am I going to call this one?

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I’m not sure why, but it was already past four in the afternoon when I eventually made up my mind to go outside. I had to get some photos fixed on paper to send to some people, so there I was in a small copy shop: Chinese young people (much like other young people all […]