Debbie and Salih Part 1

Debbie and Salih came to visit. Salih for 5 days Debbie for 9. lots of pics to follow.

they werent here for the first few pics. huge kite at this kite shop in houhai

i finally rode one of those double decker buses.

worker housing near where i live. not very nice inside

Salih has this Canon 50D mark II camera this is like $2,500 dollars and a fixed lens that takes amazing photos. the focal length is super sensitive so it takes very arty shots, especially of food. so any good shots you see are taken by his camera.

there was a moment where nana was saying we ordered beef and there wasnt any in there and they were saying yes there was and this guy the chef came upstairs to the roof even to show us. he had a rad mullet.


playing chinese dice drinking game

one of qq's friends with the card tricks. magic looks like its getting popular here or it has been.

the sun came up and we were eatin' xiao long bao, well except salih he can't eat pork.

they're hotel. real real close to nan luo gu xiang where my parents stayed

hot pot for lunch. check out the shots from salih's cam

debbie brought me some good old american stuff, spam and heinz (real heintz no the chinese excuse)


and the camera i ordered cuz the old one has tons of dust and stuff inside the lens. UPGRADE! 7mp to 12mp now. antishake and more features. i have to say it is a little better than the old one.


and smoke alarms! the only thing is there are no fire escapes in Beijing, or china as far as i have seen. so at least i will be awoken and know when i am being asphixiated as opposed to just "sleeping through and eternal nap"

outside debbies room's window. an army of basketballers in training.

home made rim protectors are common. but i just noticed the little hanging devices they made on them.


gross dried up sausages at the convenience store just like at home.

something about the H1N1 swine flu. debbie and salih got stuck on the plane for an hr because of it. they caught someone on their flight

that yogurt like dessert thing that everyone is always waiting in line for except we went next door cuz i think it is pretty similar.

the good ol' street


i don't see the disgusting frizzled out haircut that looks like you have a chow chow on your head here. it's a popular one too

this is a popular shirt. it says gong bao ji ding, or kung pao chicken, which is what i eat a bunch of times a week.


these would be cool to have, the guys on the corners of the roofs at the forbidden city.

sundail at the forbideen city


top of jing shan park overlooking the forbidden city

it started raining. it was awesome. getting a taxi was impossible.

they loved it and they loved me.


and then i decided we were all gonna squeeze into one of these. its only for 2 people.

it was rad and my legs needed to be amputated. but we got out of the rain for a while. what a mini adventure


a prime example of salih's cams food shots. i think i imported this RAW CR2 file from his camera wrong because a lot of the shots are really dark and i don't remember them being that way. but im not gonna do it again cuz it took like 6 hrs to do them all.

the chartruse chopsticks looked cool in these shots

QQ


street urchins in sanlitun. probably scored a good amount of money for their boss so they finally get a stick of meat for their troubles


i think all the girls you see on the street here that look like hookers are not, they are real girls. people know where to go for the hookers. the shops with the pink lights. anyway i definitely don't have a problem with their fashions though!


salih met some of the rare brothers in beijing, albiet straight from Africa African brothers as opposed to African Americans, you will be hard pressed to find them.

debbie said she saw the face of jesus on my sleeve which is from the walls in my stairwell that are covered with probably asbestos dust and or lead

the oh sh!t this is GOOOOOOD face.

1 Year in China Anniversary!

June 1st was the 1 year anniversary of Jason in China and out of your hair! I can't believe and can believe that it has been a year already. I still have 4 good months on my visa left too. I am going to Japan in 4 hrs for a wedding and then to tokyo to see about some rustling up a jobby. also the internet in china sucks so i haven't been able to post any stuff from debbie and salih's visit. so probably when i come back from Japan there will be 1 sheitload of posts from the last month. Here's to 1 year! thanks for reading, and hopefully there will be another year of life for this blog.

-your old schoolyard chum,

-JJJJ

Prep for 798 show

in preparation for a little show in 798 that would include 3 of my illustrations i had to take on the laborious task of finding a good print shop in beijing again. i had given up. this time around i found a place that had the same epson printer we had at FIT and even the newest one. It's at the Central Academy of Fine Art or something like that. and yes the prints were very satisfactory this time. i had them printed on genuine epson fine art paper.

an older model of the Canon copier from FIT

the lastest Epson printer. it has 11 inks! and is super fast

they probably have these at all chinese colleges, just like they have them on all the trains (not subway). a hot water dispensor for tea and ramen and the like.

a macro shot of the awesome allergens in beijing.

awesome homemade toilet seat at the college

at the frame shop. mostly these guys frame crap all day. i mean needle point stuff made from a pattern. things so tacky that i am ashamed i forgot to take a pic of some examples.

a frame cutting machine.

smoke stack at the school. this got out of order somehow.

including the frame and 8cm matte this thing is huge. like 75% the size of my bed!

Before Debbie and Salih

A post before Debbie and Salih get here.


I eat at this place a lot and sometimes take out from here. This is gong bao ji ding a.k.a. kung pao chicken. it is $1.30 for this


went to a karaoke place near my house. its weird its in a residential district in the middle of nowhere but there were tons of people there. it was like $5 for 7 hrs of singing and an all you can eat buffet crazy! and the girls wear these mini capes. there is probably a word for these.

good stuff for the vegitarians like bob. too bad we didnt eat the many yummy things wrapped in tofu bob!


this is the reason i moved to china. i took a break from working to eat dinner. me and my roomate rode down the street to eat at this sidewalk makeshift street food place that seems pretty poppin all the time. the food was good, lots to choose from, and lots to try. super cheap too. I mean it is .088 cents per stick, that is less than a penny! It is awesome that i am able to roll down the street on a warm spring night, drink a beer, experience some new stuff, experience new food, talk about china and culture and life with my roomate and then go back home and work. One of the reasons i came here is so the boring parts of life would be a new experience, things like riding the subway, eating dinner, walking home, all that stuff is just building up my experience points.


a bad thing though is how bad the air is here. here you can physically see that. I cleaned this off a few days ago and now look at it. coming in through the window.

on the other hand look at how spotless this subway track is. you could go to sleep down there. In new york if you did that you would be soaked in p!ss, have aids, and be a host mother to a family of rat babies. come to think of it i haven't see 1 rat in Beijing. Yoon said this was one of the cleanest cities he has seen and i have to agree.

I like how one of the big magazines in china is "Table Tennis World". and they love basketball here.


the University of Science and Technology has a huge mao statue. he is less fat and a lot taller than i remember him because i did have the chance to meet the man on several occasions when i was a foreign correspondant Life magazine. Oh wait that wasn't me i forgot.

Startin' to get Ballz

startin' to get hot here.

couples shirts. grossness. i wanted to buy this t-shirt of this lame little sheep cartoon character which is the only cartoon i've seen on tv in china but it turned out to be a couples shirt! They have Mr. Pizza here which is a Korean franchise. and just like Korea they use little or no sauce! I remember mr. pizza in korea being better than this though. this was like almost a store bought oven pizza. No wonder there is a bottle of ketchup and tabasco on every table because they dont use and g-damn pizza sauce! This is also the most expensive pizza i've seen in beijing. 4 thumbs down. never go to mr. pizza. on the other hand i am really temped to try this place. the marketing people really know how to reel the english speaking customers in. warm weather is here and that means street food aplenty! some spanish party that i ended up at somehow. spanish as in Spain. a couple color shots. this an apt at the first floor of my building i noticed they got a new mat that hits with that green a little down the street. blues H and M just came to beijing last month. I wonder if eventually they will get this HandN imposters its nice to know that when i become broke and homeless there will still be ways for me to continue making money as an artist. It just requires me sitting on one of the dirtiest stairwells i know in beijing literally in garbage with no shoes on. in the winter this was a disgusting almost dried up creek bed that smelled. its by my house. i didnt know that they would turn on these water things and pump water through here and that it would get all green and less smelly(but still smelly a little of course) and be kind of nice in the summer! and i didnt even notice the bonus that i got that girl looking not happy with me in the pic too. the water "spouts" that make this artificial canal it is awesome riding my bike around. somedays i go for lunch and try to go in a direction ive never been. this time i happened upon this smoke stack with a basketball hoop attatched to the side! further down there were straight up shanty shacks, it was sad, there were people out in front doing their thing so i didnt take any pics but will next time. it's crazy to think i live in an ok apartment and then 2 minutes away there are people living in corrugated aluminum shacks.