While I haven’t seen all of Charleston, most of my photos of the area have been of the bridge. Without natural elevation to influence the vantage point, I’ve also struck out on shooting an overview of the Lowcountry. That changed when a coupon for Holy City Helicopters appeared in my inbox.
In late August, I decided to give Pitt St another go-around. The week had been rainy but cleared as it neared Friday, leaving behind some clouds and making me hope the sunset would be a bombshell of color.
A few weeks after I got back from China, I drove out to the mountains to pick blueberries. We found them in droves, but I wasn’t really successful in substantiating that as I ate as I picked and never took a picture of the rather small blueberry bushes. Instead, I ended up going on four hikes and soaking up the awesome weather.
Not having visited China for several years, my primary image of the country has been formed by Western media. After my visit, what impressed me most was how much it had modernized, albeit in a very Westernized definition of the term. Behind the cultural customs is, at least now, a country that has seen incredible growth and remarkable transformation. This is nothing new; this is exactly what Western media reports and has been reporting. The Shanghai Pudong International Airport, for instance, has modern, striking lines and an open atmosphere, something arguably unconceivable maybe a half-century ago in this ancient country.
However, a lingering question, not so cleanly addressed and not so conspicuously under consideration: will it all last?
In the face of an ever- and quickly-changing business climate, it’s easy to forget just how old China is as a civilization. Even though on its surface China appears fresh and adaptive, beneath the facade is a culture that has weathered storms. Indeed, the contrast of ages doesn’t take long to show itself in China: I stood watching the only unobstructed sunset I saw on my trip from a new building, looking out over a slowly darkening sky and old apartments below.
It is perhaps a bit strange that I have thus far avoided the plane discussion on my China trip. Fear not; that discussion is here! The delay is due inevitably to how conveniently (if somewhat unrelated) it served as a segue into this post: it’s no secret that I have a love for planes and spend an inordinate time planning flights in order to fly on certain planes. No matter how hard I tried this time, though, I couldn’t get away from flying on the original jet that coined the term “Jumbo Jet”: the Boeing 747.
While I had flown on the newest iteration, the Boeing 747-8, on my trip back from Germany last year, I’ve tended to avoid United’s 747s in particular because they are old and lack in-seat entertainment. (My trip back to the US was on an electronics-rich United 787-8, in comparison.) My flight from ORD-PVG was nevertheless on a United 747-400, and in the absence of all things luxurious I got to appreciate flight as it was just twenty years ago. (Shout out: the captain did a masterful job landing the plane — it was probably the smoothest landing I’ve ever experienced.) Accordingly, I felt a pang of sadness as I watched a 747-400 push back from Shanghai’s Pudong: the view came with the realization that my inbound flight might have been the last time I fly on a 747-400. Addictions, even so immaterial as one to dated commercial aircraft, die hard.
My first post about China was about the calm parts of the trip — quiet moments where I could enjoy my surroundings or ponder my growing unfamiliarity with Mandarin. Typically, this gave way to a far more bustling and intrusive realization about my native country. There is a sense of raw energy when traveling around China that isn’t as ubiquitously prevalent in the US or even Europe; it’s urgency and claustrophobia and anxiety and curiosity and ambition all stirred into one giant hotpot.
It has been several years since I last visited China and seemed as long since my [in actuality] recent Singapore vacation. I wasn’t sure what to expect for the trip: was the pollution and smog really as bad as Western media reported? How much Mandarin had I forgotten? After visiting Singapore twice, would I find China revoltingly backwards? Would the Chinese recognize me as one of their own or as an outsider?
I braced myself for a frantic two weeks, but amid the fervor I found unexpected calm.
En me brossant les dents 