Lop Nur Journals: The "Real China", in pictures

Monday, November 06, 2006

The "Real China", in pictures

Today I got a warning from Big Brother that I was accessing an "unsafe" website (a Taiwanese newspaper, going through a proxy server to get around the blocks). It seems that while i can post to this blog, i can't actually access it, suggesting that it too is "unsafe". So be sure that you are wearing protective clothing and a closed mind when viewing the following.

Brave Zhongguo-nauts explore the surface of distant planets, with only bright orange space boots to protect them, Dunhuang:

The Maiji-shan Grottoes, Tianshui, Gansu: I've gotten into Buddhist cave art in a big way on this trip, especially after Dunhuang. Last week I was in Tianshui, a pleasant city in eastern Gansu. Nearby are the Maiji-shan (haystack mountain) grottoes, which as can be seen from the photos, are in a pretty spectacular, and vertigo-inducing, setting. Fantastic place.

Restored remains of the Tang-dyansty eating quarters, Xi-an:

New ideas in the old Confucian Academy, Xi'an. Everybody can be a celebrity these days in China. And yes, the Chinese says the same as the English, it is perfectly translated:

Despite my theoretical reservations (ranted about below), I am having a fine time. If it weren't for the flies buzzing around my head in this internet cafe, I'd go into more detail. Instead, I think I'll go get a cup of coffee.

1 Comments:

get me some of them orange gumboots. oh and vote 1 josh - he's 2, 3 and 4 in the unearthed hip hop chart and 33rd overall. oh and look at myspace/outwardobtooce at d d dave moodys comments about rudi vedalago. made my day. hope you are having joyous times and spreading the word of our lord jesus christ in the land of red devils. you sonofabitch - post some photos of shit going on with people in them - not fucken monuments. allthough the staircases attached to the mountain were pretty cool. have fun fella

By rixy, at 11:35 am

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Maurilia

In Maurilia, the traveler is invited to visit the city and, at the same time, to examine some old postcards that show it as it used to be: the same identical square with a hen in the place of the bus station, a bandstand in the place of the overpass, two young ladies with white parasols in the place of the munitions factory. If the traveler does not wish to disappoint the inhabitants, he must praise the postcard city and prefer it to the present one, though he must be careful to contain his regret at the changes within definite limits; admitting that the magnificence and prosperity of the metropolis Maurilia, when compared to the old, provincial Maurilia, cannot compensate for a certain lost grace, which, however, can be appreciated only now in the old postcards, whereas before, when that provincial Maurilia was before one's eyes, one saw absolutely nothing graceful and would see it even less today, if Maurilia had remained unchanged; and in any case the metropolis has the added attraction that, through what it has become, one can look back with nostalgia at what it was.

Beware of saying to them that sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves. At time even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices' accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old post cards do not depict Maurilia as it was, but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one.

Italo Calvino

Lop Nur Journals

Monday, November 06, 2006

The "Real China", in pictures

1 Comments:

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