Nightmares From China

This is truly a PS. The blog has ran its course but seeing this immediately made me think back. The 2009 The W. Eugene Smith fund awarded the annual $30.000 prize for humanitarian photography went to Lu Guang.

ChinaHush has the pictures with comments up for viewing. You may well found these photos somewhere else too, but please see for yourself if you haven't:

http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/

/ Closure

Thank you all for reading You Don't Know China.
We made it up to 100 posts, some of which were very good - and it showed, we got a nice increase in visitors during the last three or so months.

However, I am planning to leave China. I have flight tickets about a month from now, and for me YDKC has ran its course. I don't see a point in me continuing to write about China if I don't live here. Besides, the site has ceased to be an outlet for my personal life.

With this, I thank you again, and I'll leave this as my final post here. I'll let the site remain up - perhaps my co-writers will want to use it occasionally, or some users will want to browse the older posts.

OP Out.

Repackaged Movies

My local DVD shop has a new strategy. They've began making their own box arts for movies in order to boost sales.

The first example is easily spotted if you know what you are looking for. They add various film festival winner logos on to the regular box art. This results in some fun, if improbable combinations. I'm talking about a "low-budget B-movie about an alien probe fighting marines in the desert winning the Cannes festival" level of obviousness.

The second method is more insidious. They take an old action movie and create a new boxart. Nothing wrong with this, especially since the art guys are pretty good. Last time I was unable to distinquish between the release date and quality of Defence of Firebase Gloria (IMDB) and Hurt Locker (IMDB) because the 80's Vietnam movie got a makeover making it look like a '08 blockbuster.
A second example of this was Red Heat. When I saw the cover I actually had to turn it over and see if Arnold had made a new action movie. He hadn't, but damn if the box wasn't good enough to almost make me buy it.

This could hurt the sales of movies in the long run, but I'm not completely certain the local customers will really care which foreign war movie they picked.

OP Out.

Fashion of Sorts

All right, I can't really go "her pashmina was so 2008 it was unreal!" here, the fashion mistakes I've pictured are in a league of their own.

I've previously mentioned how in the summer men roll up their T-shirts to show their bellies, but the women of Taizhou have their own unique winter clothing. It's not very unusual to see people with their pyjamas on here. Women at times decide it's fine and proper to wear a pyjama outside and go do whatever daily activies they wish. The pictured example came to the largest supermarket in the city to show her stuff.

The second pic is from the airport. Perhaps she thought going out in a pyjama wasn't fitting, but she still decided to drag along a little piece of warm fluffy home with her. And yes, even if I don't have a pic to share, I've seen women wear the pyjama and the "shoes" as a set.

OP Out.

The Airport River

The three images above are from the small river at the local airport. It's not even an international airport and you're boned if you're headed to anything futher than Shenzhen. The airport itself is the least interesting thing to post about, so I'll cover the river.

The first image is from the last summer. The river was covered with this thick green algae, which covered all the local waterways. The growth was very smooth and made the whole river look like a slice of golf green riddled with junk and empty bottles half buried in the grass.

The river then changed outlook drastically, and got covered with green plants with occasional little flowers on them. This was in autumn and made the river look like an intentional garden. You couldn't see any water then, either.

The last image is from my last flight here. The plants have died and turned to an awful brown, with bits of black brackish stinking water peeking from the edges.

You are welcome to make your own commentary on the state of the environment as far as these images are relevant. I'll try to take the next picture in the spring to show you the whole circle of life at the Taizhou Airport river - should I still be here.

OP Out.