[ Yueqing ]
The first couple of weeks here in Yueqing have been dominated not by China, exploration, or Chinese language and culture. Instead, I’ve been ass-in-seat for 12+ hours day after day, attempting to finish the brand-new Transglobalist.com.
And I succeeded: es ist vollbracht; it went live just after 4am this morning, Beijing time. I was far too exhausted to celebrate, but I did have enough energy yet to put together a few images from the past few weeks.
I should now have some time to enjoy China as more than wallpaper.
What few photos I’ve been able to sneak in were limited to:
- A group outing to the hills above Yueqing with some new photographer friends. The weather didn’t cooperate, but we had good times and met a nice, photogenic farmer couple, the Macdonalds (no really…what? why are you laughing?)
- Snaps of my host Frank’s English class presentation of (you guessed it) 1980s power ballads; and
- The local fish & fowl &c market in Qiligang (sounds like “chili-Gahng”) near Liushizhen. I played hooky one afternoon, venturing out alone on my Walmart-special bicycle, and enjoyed a more typical Transglobalist-style outing.
Even with these limitations, some nice stories and people emerged. I made a few Chinese folks laugh for the camera, discovered the decapitated head of Donald Trump’s poultrified Doppelganger (The Trumpooster), procured evidence of a Boy named Soup, and ascertained again (and again and again): if it flies, swims, crawls, bleats, snorts, or moos, the Chinese know the best way to cook it and eat it with gusto.
Images with the usual annotations are below. I’m still working out how best to display the descriptions, but if you click the images you’ll get an easier-to-read version in the lightbox caption.
Ciao,
—jim
