A 50 hour journey is awaiting me tomorrow… I’ll be heading back to China. I will first take a bus to New York, and from there I’ll fly to Shanghai from JFK airport, and then I’ll catch one last plane to Xi’an… This is gonna be a long journey; I’m already looking forward to my bed!
A couple of weeks ago, one of my coworkers took part in a music contest. His band was among several others taking part in the event. Last year another coworker performed in a concert too, and I was there to take photos. Click here to see the pictures.
So here are some of the pictures that I took of the concert. Some pictures are better than others, yours to comment them. I’m open to any advice concerning photography techniques, compositions or anything else. On this picture, the host is introducing my coworker’s band.
I took this photo with a flash, and corrected the colors using Photoshop. Because of the flash, I lost the colors coming from the spotlights above the scene.
Photo from the balcony at the back of the concert hall, which gives you a feel of the ambiance inside the room where about 200 people came to the call.
Red lights.
I prefer this composition, but the exposure was a little too long to my taste.
Ghislain, the singer and one of the guitarmen.
The spotlights were often changing colors.
A spectator rose his bottle of beer to support his colleague.
Then came the vote. Being a contest, the band with most votes won. It was not necessarily the best band that won the contest, but the band which brought along most friends! Unfortunately, Ghislain’s band didn’t win.
However disappointed he may have felt, Ghislain was still very happy to have had a chance to perform in front of as many as 200 people. It was the first time in his life that he performed in front of so many people. When will be the next time?
For those who visit my blog exclusively for the China pictures, don’t worry, even if I am currently in Montreal (for a short time anyway), I still have a lot of pictures of China and some unfinished articles that I just need to edit and publish! But today, I want to share a couple of pictures of Montreal, the second francophone city in importance in the world, after Paris, if we don’t include Kinshasa, the capital city of the Congo, where French isn’t the only official language.
In public places, atheists and believers battle against each other with slogans and advertisement. In this case, in the subway an ad paid for by a sceptical organization quotes Nietzsche, a German philosopher from the 19th century, the one who said “god is dead!“: “A strong belief only proves its strength, not the validity of the belief“. Another slogan that had been popular for a time for atheists and agnostics was “god probably doesn’t exist, so stop worrying and enjoy life“. That movement was started in London where such ads had been placed on double-decker buses. Believers respond to these attacks by giving out New Testaments in the subway or religious pamphlets.
In China I met a guy from Toronto who told me that each time he went to Montreal, he was bothered by the predominance of the Quebec flags that are everywhere to be seen, even on top or besides some government buildings. In comparison, Canadian flags are much rarer in Montreal than they are in other Canadian provinces, as I noticed in my short trip to Ottawa two years ago. On this photo, the Quebec flag flies on top of the Hydro-Québec headquarters, a company owned by the Quebec provincial government. The Quebec flag is not only the symbol of a province or a provincial government, but also that of Quebec nationalism, which explains this Torontonian’s irritation.
When I went downtown, I thought I was in China for all the construction sites I was seeing!
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A major difference between construction sites in Montreal and in China are the fences, which, in Montreal, are used only to mark the boundaries of the site, while in China they also serve the purpose of hiding the view from the construction. In Montreal and anywhere in the West, when there is a wall around a construction site, there is always a small hole where passers-by can take a peek into… I guess these holes were put as a result of accidents involving curious people wanting to know what was going on behind the walls! In China there are no such holes… maybe people are less curious there.
Metro newspaper. One second before, the commuter behind was reading the newspaper over the shoulder of the person in front of him… but I was not fast enough to capture the moment, unfortunately.
My ex-classmates from when I was a student at the university. Most of them have graduated already. I could recognize many faces on the photos… some of them I had forgotten already, but I was happy to see again. However, some people are still mysteriously missing…
A concert that will be the topic of a future post.
Each time I am back in Quebec, I eat at least one poutine. It’s like a ritual! But I definitely need to find a restaurant where they serve healthier poutines (if there exists such a thing). The French fries had been fried for too long so they turned dark brown, which means that they contained many carcinogenic substances as well as trans fats… Conversely, the gravy and the cheese were both delicious. That kind of food is pleasant to eat, but once you finish, you are left with a strange aftertaste in your throat. It’s as if you had just eaten a handful of raw fat that was finding its way through your oesophagus to your stomach… once a year is enough! Mc Donald’s poutines are much better. But they are way too expensive and too small.
Pizza… a “vegetarian” slice. Black and green olives, green pepper, tomatoes and mushrooms.
In the mornings I enjoy not being in China so I can avoid eating baozi/jiaozi (dumplings), jiamos (chinese sandwiches) or drinking bean milk… here I eat cereals with blueberries, raisins, almonds, soja seeds and milk… all mixed with a drop of maple syrup as the sweetener! mmm very good! Both healthy and tasty. I don’t miss beef dumplings yet!
I’m back in Montreal, very far from Xi’an and China. As always, since my journey in Latin America in 2007, I am putting up here an article about my way-back journey, full with pictures of each place that I visited. This time, I traveled by plane and I was blessed with clear skies all the way to Montreal. I took some very beautiful pictures of astonishing sceneries from the top of the world! So, here it is: my return journey to Montreal from Xi’an:
The night before departure, I bid farewell to some friends.
Some Chinese farmers are learning the hard way the law of supply and demand.
Last year, the price of bananas was so high that it became subject to speculation. A number of peasants started to produce bananas, hoping they would rake in enormous profits…
But too many peasants decided to become banana growers, which caused the price of bananas to collapse. Today, the price of one 斤 [jin] (500g) of bananas is 1 yuan ($0.17), but it can probably be haggled down to half the price, if you try.
The same phenomenon occurred a couple of years ago with bricks of compacted Pu’er tea (普洱茶). The price of Pu’er tea had soared to a point where people judged it economically more favorable to “store” their money into some bricks of tea instead of at the bank. At the time, this market would offer a much better return on investment than banks’ low interest rates. But that was until the market collapsed and hundreds of thousands of peasants lost all their savings. It might seem laughable today, but lives were shattered as a result of that bubble, and suicides were committed.
The big thing this year, in addition to bananas, is garlic. We’ll see what is going to happen, but there are already a lot of farmers starting to grow garlic…
On January 1st 2010, there was a buddhist concert in Xi’an. A popular Taiwanese singer came to give a performance in Xi’an’s auditorium. This singer is trying to popularize buddhist music by incorporating some elements from pop music. She only sang during the last thirty minutes of the two-hour show. During the first hour and a half, various kinds of Buddhist music were played: monks hitting their gongs, children singing in chorus and orchestras playing traditional Chinese violin. After the show, some spectators complained that the Taiwanese singer had been lyp-synching because she sang over a recording, instead of with an orchestra. I personally believe she was genuine, because as she would move her microphone closer to her mouth and then back further again, one could hear some mild distortion in her voice… a small detail that can prove a lot!
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A man is standing in front of the scene with a panel which reads:
Please turn off your cellphones
No Pictures
No Recording
Do not Talk
Security guards were located in strategic locations to make sure the directions were properly followed.
It was, however, allowed to take photos of the concert hall.
Outside, I found an interesting ad that, in its English version, doesn’t respect the “One China Principle”:
The centre for Ajison Noodle is located in Kumamoto Kyushu, Japan, and since 1968 over 500 noodle shops have been established in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and China.
“味千拉面” 是以日本九州熊本为中心，自1968年创设以来，到目前为止在日本，香港，新加坡，中国台湾，大陆等地已拥有500余家的连锁店。
Usually, when Taiwan and China are referred to in the same sentence, they are always referred to as “Chinese Taiwan and the Mainland” or “Taiwan Province and Mainland China” or other variations… In the Chinese version, the distinction was made, but not in English… Is it the work of the “Japanese Devils” English translators?
On a bag of dog food you get the directions to feed your beloved “gestating bitch” or your “lactating bitch”. I’m not sure if the word “bitch” is still commonly used to indicate a female dog, but it surely looks awkward on a nutrition table.
I got the result of my standardized test of aptitude in Chinese (HSK)… and with great regret, I learned that I am still considered a BEGINNER (level 5). After one year and a half of intensive studies, in China, I am still a beginner… If I had gotten 1% more, I would have been able to move up to the intermediate level (I needed 262 points out of 400, but I got 258). I will have to try again in March in Montreal.
In my apartment, all the mirrors are too low; I always have to bend to see my face. And yet I am not particularly tall and I don’t find the Xi’anese to be short either… I don’t know why all the mirrors are so low here…
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