HONG KONG

Panorama view of Hong Kong island from Kowloon

Side street in Kowloon

in between two main streets

beautiful chinese Banyon trees

i made a stop back at the Shanghai expo grounds to see what the scene was like after

the expo official ended. The Chinese Pavillion was still open, and packed full of visitors

Visit to the Great Wall

We hiked along the great wall for about four hours. The wall follows the terrain

of the mountains, so at some points the descents and inclines were very steep, the stones were very smooth so we could actually slide down over them.

a weird gift shop scene

Austere Camel

My hiking companions, Martin and Sascha

Human traffic Jam

lines of cars lines of people

Beijing has a dense district of wholesale electronics part distributers, selling just about anything

one could possibly want

vintage knobs

caps

No matter where you stand, Mao will always be making eye contact with YOU

visiting Tiananmen was the first time that I felt like I was being watched. I would guess that at least 20% of the people there were undercover guards. They looked extremely cold and bored. Apparently the chinese today dont know the details of the massacre. The chinese have been led to believe that the government stamped out a violent extremest group's illegal demonstration.

Forbidden City

Daily routine

the place was crawling with these plastic army men shooting plastic guns, and carrying huge Chinese flags.

Chickens at Green Cow Farm

mobile chicken coops

Green Cow Organic Farm

I got to tag along to visit this "organic" farm on the outskirts of Beijing. It is not able to be completely organic since the air pollution is so bad. Afterwards we were invited to visit the restaurant that was associated with the farm. It was really refreshing to eat some food in China that I was able to actually visit where it came from.

This dog thinks he is a pig, all of the pigs were making dog sounds...

mmmm...

around Beijing...

Riverside in Beijing

Lotus Pond

This is the "mall" near my house. I am looking down from the second floor

I have been taking this little yellow bike all around the city on aimless rides

Kanbashi city museum, to be completed sometime....

The city has been built from the desert up in the last five years. Funding came largely from the city government and private developers. Maybe they forgot they were building a city in the middle of Inner Mongolia, where the temperature drops below -40 in the winter and goes over 100 degrees in the summer.

I spent the day at the police station trying to figure out how to add a visit onto my chinese visa. They let us hang out in their city emergency planning and strategy room. They had a cool tv

Back in China! we found this cheap little "pleasure place" where you can buy a shower and

a full body exfoliating scrub down and massage for 25yuan= 3 USD

every time somebody came through the door the steam would instantly turn to stage smoke!

Spencer and I made our way to Kangbashi, a still be developed ghost city built to house one million people

but so far only 30,000 people have bought property there, of those 30,000 perhaps 10% have actually moved there. At least that is how it felt.