(no subject)
almost every single one of these was taken from a moving vehicle so please excuse the quality.
Driving from Xiamen to a small factory district:
driving in rural china is absolute insanity. in fact, for the first few hours that you are in a car, it's terrifying. imagine being in a high speed car chase in a movie ALL THE TIME. nobody obeys any of the traffic laws that exist. nobody stops. anywhere. for anything. cars just swerve around one another, even if it is on the wrong side of the road. "cars," in fact, are the minority. all around you are motorcycles with 2-5 people stacked on them and bicycles cutting in wherever they can. it's complete chaos but the driving ability of the people who actually do drive is spectacular so after a little while you start to get comfortable...and actually kind of excited.
a few times during the day when things let out, the streets look like this:
this is the outside of one of the factories. i wasn't allowed to take pictures inside this one.
i found these in one of the showrooms.
this is a group of artists (by far the most well-treated factory employees). i wasn't allowed to take pictures anywhere else in this factory.
discarded pieces of things from the factory in front of the residencies of people who likely made them.
:)
the next set will be from a temple near Xiamen. then to hong kong.
i can't really write about what it meant or how it felt to me at this point. i don't really feel the need to right now anyway. if anyone wants to know anything about it though i'll definitely answer!
to answer trembyle:
"why are you moving"
many different reasons. "soon" was kind of loosely used though. probably 1-1.5 years. among other reasons, i want to be the minority somewhere for a while but i want it to be somewhere that isn't completely desolate and i want to live in a metropolis for a while as well. hong kong accomplishes both of those things while being one of my favorite places to have witnessed in the world at this point. i'm not completely sure why but i love it there. i love the way it feels. i haven't felt anything like night in hong kong. at the same time, with that city energy, you can go to the completely different atmosphere of a temple in no time at all where the energy is just is strong if not stronger in an ENTIRELY different way.
jace:
"do you speak any dialects"
nope, not yet.