Just arrived in San Fran, en route to Alaska for part 3 of the Alaska Trek story. Here is what I had for breakfast:

A far cry from the breakfast had in Shaolin, Henan, not too long ago:

In mid-July I left Beijing for Henan province, planning to visit 3 separate locations over the following 3 weeks. After 3 days I arrived in Shaolin and it was hard to leave the place. The food was great, the air was fresh and the scenery spectacular. Visited Shaolin temple and met the head instructor of a Wushu School. He sent me to Shanghai to photograph, performing at the World Fair, 50 of the best young Wushu talent from around China. Then had a job photographing high speed trains between Shanghai and Suzhou. Lots to discuss but not much time to write. But I have not been adding any videos to this blog, so check out recent videos at:

http://www.youtube.com/mcbphotos1

More soon in Sept/Oct, when back from Alaska…

Arrived back in Beijing on the 8th for about a month. Phew, the last few months I’ve been in Alaska working on an adventure piece and spending a bit of time on the east coast. I’ll return to Alaska in August and stay till early September, fly back to NYC then fly back to China again. If not dizzy, I’ll immediately hop in the van and - finally - hit the road full time until….

Finally received the vehicle license for the Jinbei. It took a LONG time to get this and I will not bore you with the details. But I have some very good friends in Beijing.

Leaving in two days to Henan, then Shaanxi, then back to Beijing. Going to pick up van tomorrow, apparently all construction, window tinting, etc is done…

I drove my friends Jinbei (a sort of test drive) to Ordos, Inner Mongolia, to work on an assignment. I initially thought this Jinbei had 75000 km, but it had a ‘broken’ speedometer (often the speedometers do not work on vehicles in china, esp. older ones as some Chinese pull the plug on them to make it seem as though, well, you know…). For such ‘low’ miles, anything over 100 km/hr was pushing the engine too much. Bummer, too slow for me but it’ll force me to take in more of the landscape anyway. Though I was surprised at the Jinbei performance on hills, as we passed and dodged (dodging on Chinese national highways, especially at night, is not like playing chicken it IS chicken) big 18 wheelers in the middle of the night. It was a long drive out and back to Ordos, but I nearly passed unnoticed as driving a Jinbei with tinted windows (nearly all Jinbei’s in China have tinted windows) is like camoflage for a foreigner traveling the countryside. That is, until you roll the window down or get out, when everyone wonders why you are not driving a BMW – you foreigners are supposed to be rich, right?

I drove back to Beijing alone through Shanxi province, following a hilly ‘highway’ filled with potholes through numerous coal mining communities. It was slow going and there were numerous accidents. Towards evening, there were spotlights in the sky and I followed them into the city of Datong. Why spotlights? I have no idea, they were spread around the city in random places. There is not much there but perhaps Datonger’s would not agree. Or perhaps it is, as often it is, a way to attract business: Drivers on the highway at night will be attracted and spend the night there – as they might think there is something there – as I did.

Since arriving back in Beijing 3 weeks ago I’ve been busy training for Alaska and scanning film. Walking around the city for 8-10 hours, with a 25 pound backpack, and an hour of yoga everyday. Feels good to be fit again, though if it is true that the average citizen of Beijing inhales the equivalent of 2 packs of cigarettes a day just living in the city then I’ve inhaled 42 packs of cigarettes plus (aerobics) in three weeks. Cough.

Just posted a recent update of road trip work, ’8,’ on my website.

These photographs were made using KODAK Portra 400VC and Portra 800 films. I love the color in both of these films. With 400VC, color pops in low contrast conditions without making the scene look unrealistic/oversaturated. With Portra 800, the color is reliably neutral and the skin tones look great even in low light.

There is something about film that changes the way some photographers see the world, which is partly due to the way digital has changed the way we see film. With film, the process is slower, you cannot see the image, there is less control while taking pictures, the list goes on. But using film consistently for the first time in 6 years has given me the freedom to loosen up, be more in tune with instinct and less focused on the picture taking process. Partly because there are fewer technical details to consider, the process seems more palpable and organic. After all, I am no longer holding a computer but a chunk of steel with film, the emulsion of which is technically alive:

“…if Photography belonged to a world with some residual sensitivity to myth, we should exult over the richness of the symbol: the loved body is immortazlied by the mediation of a precious metal, silver (monument and luxury); to which we might add the notion that this metal, like all the metals of alchemy, is alive.” – Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida

On Friday I drove in China for the first time. I walked out of the subway near the 4th ring road and my translator and a driver showed up in a nicely kept Jinbei. I put on my aviators, hopped in the drivers seat and shifted into first. The thing drove like the VW van I had in Hawaii 10 years ago and infatuation quickly become love. I like how I can lean over the steering wheel, how I’m elevated and can see across the landscape. I like how there is no power steering (though for another $1000 one can have upgrade) and how while rolling over a speed bump my head almost hits the ceiling. I can feel the road. It’s comparable to using a Leica (though the front end of a Leica, the lens, is arguably much more beautiful and undeniably practical): Unforgiving and basic, but pure. There are no bells and whistles, no anti-lock brakes or air bags and you must be on constant alert for drivers who may have never passed a driving test but were successful at paying somebody off.

We drove out to the factory, which makes wood and steel furniture for a company in Denmark. Bam, an idea came to mind when I saw some of the furniture laying around the factory. Might there be a way, if I buy a Jimbei on Monday, to have this factory custom build a bed and drawer configuration after I remove the seats? And might they also agree to build a steel safe and drill it into the body of the Jimbei so any curious and daring thief would not be able to remove the computer and camera equipment worth 3 times the Jinbei retail price? I hit the drawing board as I thought of the beloved Jinbei:

After lunch we spoke with a crowd of workers and discussed constructing this seemingly basic but suddenly complicated design. “The police will not let you drive through Beijing with that thing inside.” “If you buy the Jinbei with no side windows you might be ok.” “We  use mostly particle board here so we’ll have to order more plywood.” “There must be several layers between the wood and metal, with foam, to prevent the equipment from bouncing around.” My simple idea became an engineering confounder for NASA scientists. After the head worker and I took measurements we discussed where the steel box would be placed. I thought the rear end would be ideal, or the side door area, so photo equipment is easily accessible. He thought behind the drivers seat would be better and safer and made the smart observation that anything heavy placed in the back of a Jinbei might go through the roof (or the floor, for that matter). Eventually I successfully made the case for placing the steel box close to the side door, inside the wooden rectangular case.

The head worker said it would take a week to build but that if we met the boss of the factory (who is good friends with the owner, my translators father) perhaps we could have it built in a couple of days. So we went upstairs to meet the boss. The worn, cheaply dressed and comical boss did not look like the boss I expected to see (except for the chain smoking) and later I learned he was previously a farmer who sold his land to the owner of the factory so the owner could build another factory. The boss was now a trusted friend with a knack for business and had worked his way up. We walked into his office amidst heavy conversation with a couple of Chinese buyers, one of whom spoke perfect english. They looked at the plan and the english speaking buyer said, after much deliberation in the group, that the minimum I should expect to pay would be $3000. What?! Isn’t this a Chinese factory, I thought to myself. There must be a cheaper price, especially for me as I was a friend of the owner’s daughter. The buyer explained that the factory would have to stop production on other things and create a special mold. Much time would be put into making something the factory would not be able to mass produce. I thought of other photographers and travelers who might  be interested in a similar construction, maybe 3, and realized he was probably right. The head boss cracked some jokes about my expectations, the room relaxed and eventually the buyers left. Then, the translator leaned over the desk of the boss and started to negotiate. I’ve learned that negotiating in China is a way of life and, in fact, should be enjoyed. Why not enjoy something that, in China, is often inevitable if you want to get things done. The boss dangled a cigarette with two inches of ash from his weathered fingers and tenderly told the translator she was annoying but that, if given time, he would make the piece in April for 3000 RMB. I will be leaving China in April for two months and it was impossible to contain my excitement.

We left the factory and visited another making similar furniture items before driving back to the 4th ring road. While walking through this factory, we suddenly heard some loud barking towards the back. We then saw a cage with two massive Tibetan Mastiffs:

Now, this iPhone photo by no means does justice to the oversize presence of this dog. The water pale in the background is probably 2 feet wide, if that gives any scale to this dog’s lion-like size. And what a presence, I mean the thing has a mane. Some even claim, mostly Tibetan Mastiff breeders and owners (as might be expected), that Marco Polo described the Tibetan Mastiff as “tall as a donkey with a voice as powerful as that of a lion.” I guess there is a reason why they are such a status symbol in modern China, and so EXPENSIVE. As one Chinese woman, who recently spent $700,000 on an 18-month old Mastiff, put it:  “Gold has a price, but this Tibetan mastiff doesn’t.” The Mastiff in the photo above comes in at a cool $150,000, but hey, would you rather have him or a nice place in Augusta, Michigan?

Two days ago I went to the used car market near the 4th ring road in Beijing. Well, I thought it was the used car market here, as it’s so expansive, but apparently it is only one of a handful of similar used car markets in Beijing. After researching and debating over which car to buy, I decided to look into a new or used BYD F3. BYD (Build Your Dreams) started as a battery company and they have become famous for making the world’s only mass produced electric car, the BYD F3DM. Warren Buffett recently invested a quarter of a billion dollars in BYD and there has been much international attention over the past several years. The BYD F3 model, which retails for around 50K RMB minimum (~$7K) was the most popular selling vehicle in China last year (with the Volkswagen Jetta a close second) and uses something like 5 liters for every 100km (highway). When I arrived at the car market, I checked out the new BYD’s and asked about used BYD’s. The salesman explained that since the company was only established in 2003, there are not many used BYD’s. Ok. My translator then explained that some used auto dealers (and there were dozens of independent dealers at this market) have began winding back the mileage on vehicles, so I decided to find something new. I checked out the various Chinese and European brands and then something caught my eye. I walked past another popular Chinese model, a passenger known as the Jinbei Haise, produced by the Brilliance Jinbei Automobile Co., Ltd., in Shenzhen:

Now, it ain’t the prettiest thing and it has nothing to do with the iPhone camera. It would look much better (more like the classic VW van) without that big ugly front end, but apparently not everyone would agree with me. I was puzzled. The Chinese are a practical people so why the hell would they slap a big ugly American style SUV front end on this thing? Who knows, there may have just been extra SUV front ends manufactured for some other brand laying around the Brilliance factory and the boss decided to save some dough and tack those onto the 2010 model Jinbei’s. That would be at least be economically practical. But more probable is someone thought these big front ends were beautiful, a sort of cosmetic surgery for a very plain looking hunk of metal. Place your hand over the photograph so you only see the front end of the Jinbei, then take your hand away. See what I mean? You might have been expecting to see one of those big Chevy-luxury-road-trip vans but you were just disappointed. But remember, this might just have something to do with that all important keeping-of-the-face here in China. This boxy beast that can may not be too beautiful but at least it literally has one big pretty face, at least to some people. Or maybe just someone.

Nevertheless I started to like the Jinbei. Especially when I realized that I had ignored just how long I plan to be on the road and how much I want to take with me. How it would be great to sleep in the vehicle at a moments notice, how I’d like to go off-road occasionally and how I need a ride used everywhere in China; a vehicle which can be fixed everywhere and with easily replaceable, and cheap, parts. Retail price (after finding out my translators father had a friend selling them): 63000 RMB (~$9000), including insurance/registration/plates/etc. My translators father told me if I was serious about buying one that I could come to work for him for a day and drive the Jinbei he recently purchased for his company. So I am unofficially working for a Chinese company tomorrow so I can officially test drive a Jinbei.

Some questions that might be on the driving exam tomorrow:

Question #3.4.1.40 (of the Test Question Bank for Motorized Vehicle Drivers in China.)

“When encountering an old man on the road, the driver should:

A. Speed up in advance and pass

B. Bypass from behind

C. Properly reduce speed and honk in advance

D. Continuously honk to warn”

Question #4.1.2.14

“When a vehicle runs on an expressway, the driver may ascertain the speed according to his feeling.

Right or Wrong?”

Question #1.1.1.16

“If the uneven wear and tear of the pulley groove of a crane truck reach ____, the pulley groove should be rejected:

A. 3mm

B. 2.5mm

C. 2mm

D. 1.5mm”

I’ve been in Beijing since the beginning of Chinese new year, and I’ve seen more pandas than ever before. They are everywhere, at the parks, the supermarkets, at McDonalds. I see them in bathrooms, in cafes and at the mall. Of course, China is home to the panda, so perhaps I shouldn’t be so amazed. When I began the first legs of this road trip months ago my translator, Ming, had said that in the countryside I was a panda. This was in reference to my comment while traveling through some remote areas, when villagers would not stop staring at me. Many foreigners in China have had this experience, when you go to one of the myriad villages in whichever province and all of a sudden you are the center of attention. One of the first times I had this experience was in 2005, when I spent a week traveling with a circus in the countryside of Anhui province. When we arrived in a new town, every couple of days, the circus workers would place several big animals – lions, a bear, a monkey – atop a flat bed truck and pound drums while rolling through the town slowly to attract attention and advertise the evening show. I hoped to get photographs of villagers looking at the animals and to be a fly on the wall, but most often the villagers were looking at me, some ‘thing’ many had never seen before besides possibly on TV or a billboard advertisement. Near the end of my time with the circus, I would sit atop a cage with the announcer every evening as folks came to buy tickets for the show. The announcer would shout through the loudspeaker: ‘Come see our lion, come see our bear, come see our friend Michael from America.’ I would join the performers at the end of the night, running out into the center of the ring to bow following their performances. I felt like a rockstar at the time, with all the attention and smiling faces. It wasn’t uncommon to sign a few autographs, be handed tons of cigarettes (a form of respect in China) and asked a gagillion questions. So as I’ve seen tons of chinese wearing panda hats during this chinese new year and wondered what the fascination was, I’ve come to realize i’m not Mick Jagger on the road but just the subject of intense curiosity and amusement. A panda.