Fungus Workshop. Soho, Hong Kong.  Fuji X100.

Is it weird that we’re all moving towards more of a personal “brand” type of community.  It feels so strange that we all have to share or tweet whatever we see these days, yet I can’t help but feel that if you don’t start creating a name for yourself or contributing to the community… you’ll be left behind.

I joke to my friends that who you work for won’t matter in 5 years because all anyone will care about is what you write about and what you contribute.  They’ll base their judgement or qualification of you based purely on what influence you have on the internet.   You will be googled into existence.  You can already see this happening as we talk less and less about a company, and more and more about a person who works there.

I do feel that Steve Jobs contributed largely to building this personal brand.  He wasn’t really social, but certainly people didn’t follow Apple because of Apple, they followed because of Steve Jobs.  I predict a pretty  unorganized decline of quality at Apple now that the dictator is gone.  Products will probably be more confusing and standards less adhered to.  But that’s because the person who imagined it all is gone.  And that’s how important people are becoming to companies.

Seriously, 5 years. You won’t care who people work for on a resume anymore.  Only what they contribute, the following they have and how might be interesting to you.

I just hope I’m not getting too old for all this : )

The bfg

Scarborough Bluffs.  July 2011. Walk with Shawn and Steve.  Sony NEX3.

At Shamian Island. Guangzhou, China.

There were three staircases.  On the left, a ridiculous snow pile covered each step leading upwards and a sign that said danger, do not pass.  Whew.  I hadn’t planned on cracking my head open today, so I was glad that to the two paths on the right were cleared and walkable.  Looking up however, my stomach dropped and a nervous laugh escaped.  What seemed like 10 stories of stairs rose above me enclosed by a narrow corridor of mountain and the exit was nowhere to be seen.  I was seeing first hand what the tower of Babylon might have looked like.

Halfway up the 10 story looking staircase, still the exit yet to be seen.

I feared how many more similar stairways were ahead of us.  We rounded the corner and found ourselves on a flat section of the mountain.  I turned around.  The west peak was staring me in the face and told me that we had about half hour to go.  Amazing.

When we arrived at north peak, it was surreal.  Not the view, but the fact that we made it.  We made it after 4 hours of trekking up the hill chewing on overpriced oreos and knock off gatoraide!

Many tourists didn’t bother climbing up much farther than north peak.  To arrive to the west peak you have to climb an insane looking stairway up the dragon’s back of the mountain.  Its a hard climb and both sides of the path drop precariously into the unknown.  As we rested at north peak to enjoy our accomplishment, a moment of melancholy came upon me because on one hand I had done what I had set out to do, but nobody recognized my accomplishment.  As George Jung says in Blow, It was the greatest feeling I ever had.  Followed abruptly by the worst feeling I ever had.  It’s funny thinking back about this because even though it meant nothing to anybody, I remember having a sick smile on my face.

The view of the walk to west peak from north peak.

The famous stairway to west peak, up the narrowest path of the mountain.  Sometimes you could hear the porters singing as they carried 50lb up the path.

As light started to become scarce, we scurried to find a place to stay.  Numerous hostels are on Hua Shan, but the maps are not clear as to how many flights of stairs you have to climb until you reach one.  We ended up at one exceptionally empty hostel.  At first, we were going to do the cheap option of a dorm bed, but we figured it would be brutally cold, so we opted for a double room.  The hotel wanted $100 to which I scoffed and said no, $20 each.  The manager laughed at me and said no to which I laughed too and started walking away.  Matt had to use the washroom (an over decorated hole off the side of the mountain) and I waited.  Out of nowhere I saw a girl running towards me and in a huff of breath, she smiled and said to me OK $20.  Sweet.  We put our bags down since it was a lockable room and we watched the sunset off the side of west peak.

Sunset on west peak.

I had run off on my own for a bit because Matt was tired.  I was trying to get some good shots of the east peak when I decided to climb past some barriers and up some boulders to get a better view.   As I set up my camera to take some time lapses, another girl ran up with an odd baseball cap wearing a huge clash of color.  It was like she jumped out of a Dragon Ball comic book all bubbly and stuff.  She said something to me in mandarin to which I smiled and nodded having no clue what she just said.

I started speaking english out of habit and amazingly she understood.  We talked a bit.  She  was traveling alone from Shanghai and was seeing Hua Shan for the first time.   At this point I was still yelling down at her from my boulder so she climbed up and set up her camera beside mine.  We chatted a bit about photography and she pointed to the hotel across the chasm over at east peak, her stay for the night.  I told her that was going to be at least another hour of climbing and she should run off now if she wanted to save any light and she refused saying she has a flash light.  I laughed.  Crazy chinese people.  We ended up sharing photos and parted ways shortly after, myself a bit amazed that I would meet someone of all places here.

Our lovely hostel

The lights are actually stairways lining the mountain paths.  You can climb at night with a flashlight if you’re brave enough.

The room felt like a fridge.  Bundle up, I said to matt, wear everything.  This isn’t much different from camping in the Canadian spring so I was used to this biting frost.  It was just odd to have it feel this cold within the confines of what appeared to be a perfectly hospitable room.  I wore two pairs of socks, pants, coats, a hat and buried myself under the covers, using own breath as my sole source of heat.

I woke up at 530am unable to fall asleep again.  I started packing trying not to wake Matt, but at the last minute he rose as well.  We decided it was perfect timing anyhow for us to go out and catch the sunrise.  It must’ve been -3 or so on the mountain because my breath was fogging up my glasses.  Nobody on the mountain.  We walked up to west peak and perched outselves on a small outcrop waiting.  The result was nothing short of spectacular.  Did you know that the sun rises within the span of minutes?  Within such a short time, I found myself warming up and unable to look directly at the orange ball of warmth coating every inch of the mountain.

Sunrise

There are a number of items of ridiculousness on Hua Shan for those willing to brave the walk.  One of these is called Chess playing pavillion.  This place was intriguing because to reach it, you would have to walk off what seemed like the cliff of the mountain, backwards, with only chains to hold on to before reaching a pavillion that had no business being built there.

Aptly named “sparrow walk”.  Because if it takes a bird to be able to walk off here, how fucked are you as a man?

Chess playing pavillion.  Sadly, it was closed when we got there, due to the snow.

We continued on towards south peak.  If south peak’s main attraction “Cliff Plank Walk” was closed, I would have to find someone to throw off the mountain.  I had come all the way to China for this so it better damn well be open.

South peak’s main gate.

This man was the guard.  Ahead, the cliff plank walk.

The entrance to the cliff plank walk was grand.  We walked across numerous hostels, a bell tower a grand gate and then another pass built of stone.  Everything only worked to build up my anticipation and as I arrived I saw that the gate was closed! SHIT! It can’t be!  I was sulking in the recesses of the entrance when all of a sudden a man appeared and sat as you see above.  Someone out there likes me.  He told me he needed 30RMB to pay for insurance and the harness.  What?  Insurnace?  If I fall off the mountain there’s no way in hell you’d find my body anyway.  I assumed that I was merely paying for the future loss to the harness.

My gut was in a knot at this point.  I pondered whether to bring my camera, but I convinced myself that the pictures would be worth the risk.  The plank walk was insane.  You walk towards the wall you see above and all of a sudden there is no place to go except down.  Looking down, you see that some intelligent individual has made a ladder in the narrow confines of the mountain using two bars of loosely placed metal in stone.

Looking down

These bars didn’t exactly have my vote of confidence

Going down the ladder was ridiculous.  The wind was blowing in my face and at any point I felt like if I didn’t hang on with all my strength I’d be blown off only to be remembered by my stupidity since my body would have probably splattered so hard i’d be little more than a speck on this epic mountain.  When I reached the bottom of the ladder, I looked to the left only to see that the plank walk was about 20 ft away.  What the fuck.  I drew my eyes from the wood, back to my feet and noticed the same clever individual had chiseled into the mountain foot holds.  So I put my feet in them and was very much ready to admit defeat until I realized they were actually much more sturdy than the two bar ladder design.  I shuffled over in short time and made it to the plank walk.

The foot holds

WOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOO!!! Ignore my appearance.  Insanity has clearly caught up with me.

Now you might ask at this point, what exactly is on the other side?  To answer that question, I’d have to say with many things in life, the value is in the adventure and not the final destination.  And I say this because the other side had nothing.  A small temple with merely a plaque to which we had to walk backwards back on the plank walk and back up the ladder to where we started!  What made it even more crazy was that someone else decided to come down while we were going up, so we had to fit two of us in that narrow corridor of rock and metal.  Is insanity worth it?  …Hell yea.

East Peak

View down from the other side of the image above

Being a poser.  Really though, Hua Shan was beautiful.

Finally, we had hit all four peaks.  It took six hours since sunrise to climb it all, and we were ready to get a good meal back at Xian.  We started our way down to the cable car from east peak and found that walking down the hill was much faster but not any easier on the knees.

Porters with their empty baskets going back down the mountain for more.  Where possible these men would always take the hard path or solder’s path as it was called.

On the other side of that mountain is where our hotel was.  It was a six hour trek to get to east peak from west.

Experiencing Hua Shan was similar to the lightness felt with any sort of love.  It was indescribable.  So many times in this place I sat wishing I had a better way to capture this experience but I understood in my heart that living it was the only way to capture it best.  I was on a high for the next week and checked another item off the bucket list.  Is this what really living feels like? I thought, as I rode the cable car back down, watching the ease in which technology was carrying me back to reality.

Matt left after this section of the trip and I was left to my own devices for the first time.  Nervous didn’t begin to describe what I felt, but at the same time having accomplished something so exhilarating gave me the confidence to take anything at this point.  Unfortunately I was pretty reckless to begin with, so if recklessness was my crack, then confidence was my heroin.   The following couple weeks led me to have an even larger love for China and I set out to discover it with my heart open like never before.

We found a tour bus that would drive us to Mt. Hua for $30 RMB.  Not a bad deal considering we’d spend the better half of 3 hours on the ride over.  Being in China made me skeptical of everyone.  The owner of the bus was run by a young boy who looked like he had more in common with korean dramas than running tour companies.  So I asked him a grand total of six times that we were actually being dropped off near the hiking trail to Hua, and not the cable car.  You can’t be too careful in China.

We were dropped off near the tour company’s main office in the town where Hua shan is located.  We were briefly lectured about the risks of hiking Mt Hua but it was all in Mandarin so it was all a moot point to me.  Matt tried to translate for me.

“Mt Hua is one of the most dangerous mountains in China, and maybe the world.”

“You will be climbing stairs where each side of you will drop hundreds of feet.”

“IF you are scared, then I suggest you climb at night!”

At this point, everyone’s eyes peered up giving him the look of crazies.

“…because if you climb at night, you won’t see anything! so you can’t be scared!”

A natural comedian, haha.

We ate briefly at the restaurant, it felt weird to be the only customers, likely for the entire day.  The meal was expensive and the taste bland, but it was the carbs we needed.  A stray dog laid outside sitting in a fetal dying position and I swear, I have never seen as many scared dogs as in China.  Maybe they know that they could be dinner tomorrow.

We walked up to the main Hua shan gate, realizing that we were finally here.  For me, it was an adventure I had waited ten years for.  I first saw Hua in my junk hotmail inbox.  Something about a crazy mountain in China with these ridiculous pictures of chinese people climbing the sides of mountains holding on to only chains.  At that point I decided I HAD to come here, and here I was, finally.  I felt like I had landed on the moon.

We took the obligatory pictures at the entrance and before we knew it we were buying tickets and ready to hike.  It’s kind of a strange feeling walking up a mountain.  I mean, on one hand it sounds ridiculous to know that at its highest point, Hua Shan is 7000ft in the air.

We walked briskly.  The first 3KM were a breeze, much like a leisurely walk in the park.  What you don’t realize though, is the walk is slowly draining all your energy for when you really need it later, the stairs.  We didn’t really take many breaks, but Matt was in worse shape than I was.  He was a real trooper though and as we got higher we rewarded ourselves with more rest in between strides.

The road reminded me a bit of alice in wonderland.  Where all around you the world just seemed surreal, yet there was this pathway leading you somewhere you didn’t quite know.  You’d follow it of course, but it all just seems so whack because it seems like there should be no place for such a road in between such hostile but beautiful terrain.

By far the cutest stray I saw.

Yes, that really is a motorcycle going down a mountain path.

As we got higher, we passed by so many hermit houses.  Houses which didn’t look like they belonged anywhere near a mountain with stairs looking like you’d pay a price to be drunk when walking down them.  Most of the places were temples I’d imagine and most probably weren’t in use.  Still, it was amazing to see the effort it must have took to build such a place.

After about 4 KM, we started hitting the stairs.  Here we go, I thought.  After about 50 steps I was already exhausted.  It was a pretty sad day for my fitness ability but we marched on.  The stairs were incredibly annoying.  You know when people don’t build steps small enough to let you double them and not large enough to let you take one comfortable step either?

We passed by so many different engravings of chinese characters on rocks.  It was gorgeous.  As we got higher, the mountains started surrounding us on every side, as if it was embracing us, letting us know that it understood the insane trek that we were undergoing and that it would soon be worth its weight in gold.  As we walked up, we hit an area where there were padlocks and red everywhere. I was told that travelers would place locks here for good luck.  That’s a lot of travelers.

The hiking trail was pretty empty when we walked that day with the exception of a couple women who were also making the trip.  They moved fast, much faster than I’d be willing to admit.  A group of old folks were coming down the mountain while Matt and I were catching our breath and I remember them pointing and laughing at us.  Ha ha, encouragement!  We went past many small shops that were closed for the better part of the winter.  Walking along one of the houses, I saw running water streaming down the steps and noticed that he was washing cucumbers over cold water.  Awesome!  Those things are amazingly tasty.

We continued walking for what seemed like another couple hours.  You really can’t explain how difficult it is to be constantly going up stairs.  You only ever realize how high you are, or how many steps you’ve climbed when you stop to rest, turn around and see how high you’ve come up the hill.  It becomes a bit of a routine after a while and a real treat seeing the scenery unfold before your own efforts.

I’ll continue this in the next post… too many pictures for one page, and it’s time for an early morning tomorrow.

During our last day in Beijing, Matt and I bought our train tickets to Xi’an and were sitting comfortably in the north train station waiting for our high speed train that wasn’t arriving quite high speed enough.  We had got here early so we paced around a packed station.  “How come the chinese characters don’t match up Matt? It doesn’t make any sense that it’s not on the board.”

“Maybe we’re too early.”

“But there’s only 30 minutes left, I thought these trains are like clockwork in China.  Let’s ask someone.”

after waving various hand motions and a pinch of broken mandarin, the lady says to us,

“You’re at the wrong station.”

Everything moved slower for the next 10 seconds as my brain processed the exact words and repercussions of what we were about to face.  In seconds, my body span, clinched to gather strength and I thought in slow motion, “two stations!? I didn’t know there were two stations!”, “Taxi or subway?”, “How much time left?!”, “man I could use some hot pot”, “Shit!”.  I remember we both moved in unison as if somehow our mutual motions of fear and aggressiveness combined would create a more powerful being.  Kind of like, in transformers when the smaller tonka trucks combine to make a more powerful awesome mega robot? Yeah.

We ran like zombies were chasing our asses, then jumped into a cab and screamed, “SOUTH TRAIN STATION!”  As luck would have it we hit every red light.  I gazed worriedly at the clock every couple seconds which only made the taxi ride that much longer.  When I finally saw the station we had 10 minutes left, so I opened the door as I felt the car slowing down. I was halfway out of the cab and the cabbie SPED UP the car.

“WHAT THE FUCK!” I cried in disbelief, my skin painting the pavement.

“He says you can’t get off here, or he’ll get ticketed by that cop over there.”

“… LOOK AT MY FUCKING LEG!”

He let us off a bit further and we dashed into the station only to be held up by security.  Thankfully the concept of lineups don’t exist in China so we pushed our way to the front and busted through to see the main timetable.  It’s harder to read when you force yourself to do it, but eventually we made sense of the continuously rotating timetables.

Seeing the train at the gate was the biggest relief and after jumping aboard, we just made it with minutes to spare.  The whistle wailed and like that, we were on to our next destination.  I sat staring out the window at the stream of lights trailing by.  As I calmed my heavy breathing, I thought that this was just another one of those crazy experiences that you only get when you are willing to laugh at yourself and the unpredictability of real life.  Then I rolled up my jeans and cleaned up my leg.

I woke up quite groggy.  Sleeping on a train that continuously shifts left and right was less comfortable than I thought it would be.  I woke up many times thinking it was daylight, only to realize we were passing by another train station.  The trains have to slow down as they go through district stations so you end up dazing in and out of consciousness as you become one with the train.

The tombs were a mess.  It was both sad and astonishing to see what kind of state the terracotta warriors were in.

Many of the warriors were still being reassembled painfully piece by piece.  I spent a lot of time just trying to see how they could manage to recapture which piece would go where.  I mean, they all look the same!  What a nightmare.

Plastic wrap.  China’s version of Canadian ducktape.  sweet.  ignore the sign plzokthxbibi.

Xi’an was both beautiful yet poor.  A friend from Beijing described it to me best by saying that it was a city raped of its soul years after having its title taken away as the capital of China. Many of the buildings within the city walls were in poor condition and although there were notible improvements, building of subways and what not, it was very clear that overall the cityscape was very old.  I actually found Xi’an quite charming in its own way, I’ve always preferred grungy over the superclean streets of say, Singapore.

Outside the city walls, it was fun walking around as the sunset.  We were able to just catch the sunset as we climbed the walls to enjoy the lantern festival that we stumbled upon at the same day.

One of the less useable homes around the core neighbourhoods within the walls.  I saw a man watching TV with a hole in his wall as if it was modern day air conditioning.

We walked all night from the east side of the wall all the way to the end at the west side.  It took around 3 hours and we were tired only to realize that we’d have to walk all the way back to return to the hotel.  Ugh.  We decided to walk some of the less populated streets, darker corners of Xi’an just to see if we could find anything.  I am not sure what we were looking for exactly, maybe partly trouble, but we ended upon a real treasure.

We saw a crowd gathered around a woman who seemed to be cooking.  Her contraption was inventive.  A bike held all her groceries, a paint can her oil, her stove consisted of a oil drum with coals and a old switch controlled fan.  Every now and then she’d reach down to the fan to switch it on.  It took me moments to realize that she was blowing oxygen into the oil drum to fire up the heat.  It was brilliant and resourceful in an stone henge kind of way.  Her husband noticed we were foreigners and offered us some of his own tea and acted like a store manager.  He asked us where we were from and we conversed briefly with hand signals as food was brought to our table.  The wife cook was a bigger woman.  Years of cooking made her hands look like she could crush water out of solid rock.  6RMB a plate for spicy noodles and it was to die for.

We found calligraphy street.  Isn’t this beautiful? Not gonna say much here.

The lovely lady cooking us our yummy noodles along with the incredible machine.

My beard monstrosity was growing in after only 4 days.  Spicy noodles ftw!

A common attraction in Xi’an were the muslim communities visible within the city.  Xi’an houses a number of mosques that were very charming.  They consisted of large courtyards with multiple interconnecting buildings leading always to a giant prayer center at the end.  Also within the communities were many stores and shops selling Muslim food.  It was curious to me because I never knew that people in China followed this religion.

An example of the interlinking courtyards within one of the mosques.

The hats were a sure sign of the muslim community within Xian.

Charming fabrics found within the mosque.

Loved the colors in this photo.  People used this table to get spices for their noodles which seemed very common within the muslim community, possibly because they are vegetarian?

These little steamed desserts were great.  She cranked them out with the efficiency only a chinese woman could do.

We didn’t spend too much time in Xian, maybe 2 days.  Because what lied next was Hua Shan.  The most dangerous mountain trail in China and my sole purpose for the backpacking trip.  I was so close now, I could taste it.  I knew Hua would take us two days of hard work so we made sure we ate tons in Xi’an and rested well.  I predicted the hike would take us about 6 hours each day so it was going to be a rough ride coming up, still I couldn’t wait for the hours to pass!

The drum tower in the distance.  We were walking up from a Starbucks, coffee reminded me of home..

The biggest cookie IN THE WORLDDDDDDDDDD *NYUMNYUMNYUM*

Backpacking China alone was a subject I never believed to be possible.  In some ways I was being too reckless, but I feel that danger is a part of what makes life worth living.  That feeling when your brain tries so hard to tell you you’re an idiot, then sighs when you do it anyway.

Until Gene said “I hope you don’t end up like 127hours later guy,” did it hit me that what I was doing most people would consider unnecessary.  I didn’t read Chinese, I didn’t speak mandarin and I haven’t ever been to China before, so why not do a tour instead?  I knew though, that I wanted to have that backpacking experience of deciding on a whim where to go, what to eat and who to talk to without the burden of 6am wake up calls and schedules.  I expected China to be at times, dangerous.  Yet in my heart I felt that a country housing a third of the world’s population must deliver first on its beauty and charm.  I have faith in people and I have learned not to judge prematurely.  God, it did not disappoint.

I brought a colorful guidebook, a mandarin phrasebook and my macbook air.  I battled myself regarding the laptop but by today’s standards, its a lifeline.  Thankfully for my first 10 days in Beijing and Xi’an i was able to find a buddy to come with so I wasn’t completely on my own.  We ate such amazing food, just thinking about it is making me hungry again.

My first couple days found me in Beijing.  Here are some of my favorite photos of the leg.

Security was tight everywhere in Beijing.  It made going to most of the government sites burdensome but tolerable.  Frankly I just got used to handing over my bag everywhere I went, so much that I stood at a security guard with my bag open for 10 seconds only to have her staring at me.  Apparently she was just in training and never asked me for anything.  Oops.

Summer palace was cold.  The lake was for the most part frozen over, but thawing.  The palace itself was closed until May, but we ran off into the forests and explored places we were never supposed to go.  We secretly found the top of the palace you see in the distance to the right as a reward.

The pagoda was visible in the distance as we climbed up the palace walls, the sunset made it ever more serene.  I think we stayed here to watch it for about 10 minutes without saying much of anything.

A game of birdie keep up played by people chilling at local parks.  I saw this all over Beijing.  The game itself isn’t much different from keep up in soccer except you have to see it when they do a blind behind the back flip kick!

At Tiananmen square, I noticed people gathered in large numbers by the park selling something.  There were hundreds of people looking down at papers so my curiosity got the best of me.  As I started snapping photos, I was chased away very quickly.  I discovered that they were advertising their single daughters and sons for a future partner.  Like personals in your local classifieds except you meet the mom and dad first.  The papers would state the age, status and job of the person.  Some had pictures.  It was kind of sad but I’m not sure if this is the norm.

The mitanyu section of the great wall of China in its un-restored state.  There is a sign before this area that says “Do not pass”.  When you pass it this is what you see, the great wall for its true beauty but state of wear and tear.  Can you believe there are trees growing in the middle of the great wall of China?!  Neither did i!

All that remains in many stretches of this section is the desolate rock that lies in sole recognition of where the wall once was.

A reflective bridge post at the Old Summer Palace.  We walked long and hard here and I stupidly brought my backpack along for the 5 hour walk.  No wonder I lost 10 lb on the trip.

Stray cat sleeping along the Ruins at Old Summer Palace.  Stray animals were as common as street vendors in China.  I wonder who feeds them?

Tiger Leaping Gorge.  Yunnan province, China. Sony NEX3. 18-55mm @ ISO400

I’ve been fighting a battle with an enemy that I have yet to identify.  Each day brings a new twist to the latest drama called my life at 29, and though the excitement of daily change never bores me, it drains on my conscious being, wondering each day if some invisible wall will drop, suddenly and swiftly to provide me an element of calm.  I need calm.  Is this what ADD feels like?  My mind switches constantly, bam. bam. bam.  I feel like I’m watching an iPhoto slideshow, you know the ones at the Apple store, with the perfect smiles, perfect people with perfect supersaturated colors?  Except the photos are of my own life, and each photo shows me a gorgeous, desirable moment that I have yet to experience.  I want them all, but I can’t have everything and before I can decide… swish, with the beauty of cross-fade and a modern 3D transitions… the next photo appears and only to make me go through the same thought process all over again.

I know what I want in life, but I can’t figure out which road to take.  I feel like a kid at a candy store knowing fully how tasty that sugary goodness will caress in my tongue, but having only $2, the heart wrenching choice of one over another must be made.  We all know that we should follow our heart, but so often our hearts ask us to put our heels against the edge of a cliff, hanging off everything we know as secure, stable, steady… and take that next step forward.  I should just take it, shouldn’t I?

camera phone. HK.  Mong Kok.

Words suck when they can’t express the feelings in your heart.

Thankfully we have our imagination.