Day 8 – No plans whatsoever | Seizing the Light

I just woke up and realized it was nearly noon. Sara was already at work and Alicia and Sam were on their ways back to London. With nothing planned, I lounged around, caught up on the news (bp spill) and tried to facebook to see what would happen:

^Photo hunt item #8, “An example of censorship.”

Now this brings up a rather interesting point. Yes, Facebook is blocked in China, yet I would not consider it censorship. ‘Merica absolutely LOVES making China look like the oppressive bad guy, but I would disagree; China is merely protecting its own interests. China has its own version of Facebook, and the following:

Blocked sites Chinese variants
Facebook RenRen
YouTube Youku or Tudou
google Baidu

China is simply promoting it’s in-house products (yes, by blocking competitors) but we have done the same in the past (remember the Ford Motors employee parking hoopla?) and are doing it now (USAF Tanker contract anyone?). And if one REALLY wanted to access those sites, he/she could easily get a VPN account in order to do so (China isn’t actively stopping those services). I won’t get too deep into this, just some thoughts…

Anywho, after bumming around for a while, I went back to the market where I got my glasses to explore the camera market.

^the subway station had put up a new ad. I like their logo better.

The photo market is pretty much two floors of shops jam packed with new photo gear, used photo gear, vintage photo gear. Essentially, I wanted to buy everything.

^I held out and left the mall with just two pairs of glasses… wait what?!

Yes, while at the market, the saleswomen recognized me from the other day and pounced on me. We chatted about life in the US, life in China, my horrible chinglish and all sorts of other stuff. I ended up with another pair of glasses and sunglasses for 220 RMB.

^photo hunt item #1

After this, I headed for 1933, a slaughterhouse (built in 1933) that had been recently refurbished into retail space/restaurant space/gallery space. It was getting late in the day and the light was getting nice.

Now, 1933 is a multi-level concrete structure with large amounts of detail. The place as a restaurants/gallery area is already kind of spooky… I can’t imagine what the place was like when it was fully operational.

^I wonder what they did here…

The large spaces from the photos above broke off into smaller rooms:

The top floor had a glass floor:

Looking down into the building… there were many chutes for transport of parts… and drainages for managing the blood…

After getting my architecture fix, I had to get back to the city center for dinner…

I stopped for photos and wound up late:

(I also stopped at uniqlo but did not document that)

Tony and his friends had planned this big dinner at a Taiwanese restaurant. I was able to eat many things I have not had in a while (kong ching tsai, refried yo-tiao, etc).

^dessert was the BEST part.