Midi Festival

  Two weeks ago Shanghai celebrated the MIDI Festival, of course, with a lot of music, and I went there as photographer, because my friend Indi asked me to do that favor for her. I was going to take pictures for the brand D'or et D'argent, and some of those pictures are in the website. I only went to the festival oone day, Friday, so I will tell you my experience at this Shanghai MIDI Festival 2014.

Poker Queen Tee

   This Festival was a little bit TOO FAR, maybe I should say it was in Korea and not in Shanghai. If you wanted to go there, your stop was YuanDong Avenue, two stops before arriving to Pudong Airport, more or less half and hour from Shanghai. Once I got there I just followed the herd of kids, because I had read in some website that there was a free bus to the festival, and for sure all of these guys were going to the festival, so I just followed them. I have to say that the bus was too packed, and didn't leave the station until 20 minutes later, but this is China, and this is the Chinese way.

DJ One

    When the bus arrived there, the checkpoint was a little further from the bus station, so I walked there and waited for Aymeric, the French who was going to give me the ticket to go inside and explain what I had to do, because he was the designer for these clothes and my "boss" that day. He made me a little tour of the Festival and told me how he wanted the photos, something hard due to it was a music festival, but I did my best. The weather was not the best, windy and sometimes rainy, but people there didn't care about that. Not a lot of people were at the festival at the very beginning, but during the day more and more people came to the party. But I was there to take pictures and not for the music, so here are some of the pictures I took that day:

    Finally I have to say that it was a good surprise that two of the DJs at the festival were spanish: Rodri or DJ One and Iván Oliva, who were really amazing, with their sessions and also became good friends. I ended up taking pictures for Iván, and maybe you can see that pictures on his Facebook, and of course we had lots of fun.

Session

   My friends went to the festival on Saturday, when it was raining the whole day and there were only puddles and mud. That Saturday was a busy one for me, with classes and editing photos, but sometimes I have to stop and rest, or I'll go crazy! Coming soon I will start again with cultural post and my life in Shanghai not only parties!

   See you soon!

Tomb-sweeping day and barbacue

  Last week was here in China the "Tomb - sweeping day " . This festival is called Ching Ming or Qingming , usually held on the 15th day of the spring equinox, which occurs normally  on April 4th or 5th , and it's a day when the chinese honors the ancestors.

   This particular day is the day when people go to visit the graves of relatives and clean them, offering food to ancestors and if you ever noticed , this the day that the Chinese burn this red paper representing money, with which according to tradition to send money to the dead people. These days are usually holidays in China , Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan so many people these days travel to their hometowns to visit their ancestor with their family.

    This tradition is similar to the spanish tradition or the western tradition when we visit the deceased in late October, but with some differences as I said. We, as perfect no-chinese thought that could be a great idea to have a barbecue in a park here in Shanghai, at least to breath some real air, not the polluted one from the city, and also because we couldn't visit other cities due to holidays, you know, is when more people move in China, and it's really crazy to take a train those days. Some Chinese friends said it was not a good idea because many people would be there because the holidays, and plus, it was a really nice day to enjoy outside.

   At first it seemed that the barbecue was not going to be held,but finally it was really a nice day, because the weather was good, the food also and the people better, coming from Spain, Denmark, Germany, Switzerlandm China, Italy, Korea, United States...And we ha more people that couldn't come, but it was really nice.

   In the last minute of Saturday afternoon we changed the location for the barbecue, from Gucun Park, next to the city, to Gongqing Forest Park, where Shanghai ends because the sea is the next thing you will find. The good thing about this park, as its name says, is that is a forest, so it's an immense place. The worst thing is that the barbecue area is very small, and that instead of a barbecue area it was like a battlefield.

Battlefield: Gongqing Park    When we arrived we were hanging around the barbecue area to see where we could stay, but it was impossible, and in the second try we found one of these, how to call them..."tents"? which was where people could put their stuff and eat. We were there for20 minutes until the guard keeper came and told us that we need to move because we hand't paid. We thought we were lucky but our stolen spot was conquered by the real owners (2 girls), and although we asked them to share the spot they refused. But we did not go too far, and we stayed between two od the tents, which was one of the best decisions we made.

The Barbecue team strikes BACK!                      The Barbecue team strikes BACK!

   That day we experience by ourselves what is really being Chinese, as we were in the middle of everything, we were the only foreigners, smoke, people, trash, screaming, etc.. Totally crazy, but after a while we got used and we integrate further into the environment that was intoxicating our lungs. We, like good novices, took a ball to play football, but of course, where we were going to play something if we could not even move from the outskirts because there were too many people?

Spanish Power!

    If we talk about the park you can say it was an amazing place, vegetation, rivers, many types of activities,  from paintball, to zip lines, boats, places to fly kites, amusement park and even a train inside the park. One of the best things in this park and what everyone without exception was agree was about the smell, nature, vegetation, anything that does not smell in the center of Shanghai, where the most characteristic smell that you can get is from baozì (typical buns stuffed with meat).
 

   We couldn't celebrate Hanami like in Japan, but it was something similar, despite being at 10,000 times faster than Japan, with incredible stress, even people with a barbecue in the bushes, but it was a great day, I hope that soon we can repeat.

Dusk

The guardkeeper

   Here in Shanghai I live in a small complex of 3 buildings, and mine is number 2. To go inside there is only one entrance, or at least I only know one, because I’m to lazy to explore beyond block 3, but I don’t think there is another one.

   In this entrance I mentioned there is a small office where is usually the guardkeeper, in fact they are four different guys but i don’t know if they are parking attendants or professional assholes. Only three are like that, because the one that made me write this it’s the one that is working around 7, when I arrive from work. Maybe I had a bad day, maybe I’m tired, sad or whatever, but this guy always makes me smile with a big “¡HOLA QUE TALA!” (like How are you doing in english, but in spanish should be Hola que tal, not tala). That works like a big slap to wake me up.

   Many times he is in his office, protecting himself from the cold, but when he sees that I’m there he opens the window as fast as he can and with half of his body outside shout his spanish sentence. One day he tried to tell me that he lived for 8 years in Spain, but he didn’t learn spanish, and that was long time ago.

   There was one day I used the military salute, and suddenly he came to attention and made the military salute too. Then he tried to explain me, as best as his mimicry could, representing a war, a naval fight, with all the sounds and explosions, machineguns and all the stuff, that he was in the army or the Navy, I think it was the Navy, because he said that every second. But he tried to say that wasn’t a good job for him, it was so dangerous for him, so he resigned. All the things that you can understand, only with mimic, just amazing.

   Sometimes, during the weekdays, maybe he recalls that I’m gonna be there and I see him outside with his office chair with only 3 wheels left (it must be a 6-wheels chair), with a small notebook and his chewed pen, just waiting for a new spanish word. He writes on the notebook and shows me, and if it’s okay he makes me say the word one thousand times until he can follow me and do it by himself. It’s really funny, how he tries to say the word and then with his pleased face and looking like a superhero he say the word to the first guy who crosses the street, with the only answer of a scared face and maybe the guy thinking why God put together the crazy guardkeeper and the laowai. 

  Meanwhile, he tries to teach me some word in chinese but he always abandon me because i’m an impossible case for me, and he only says “spanish, spanish”, denying with his head, but it’s to hard for me, maybe because he has a strong accent or because I’m too bad with chinese, or maybe both. But there he is, now he can say his “Hola que tala”, and “Muy bien”, and it’s good for me that he forgets the other words, or I’ll be home everyday around 22!

In fact, it’s really nice that even if I cannot say more than 2 or 3 words in chinese and he cannot go beyond “Muy bien”, and maybe one word in english, we understand each other and it’s really good to see him with his toothles smile and his notebook waiting for the next 5-minutes class with his spanish friend from the 17th floor. Sometimes if I’m late I can see him bored in his office, but he only needs “Hola” to show his smile and there we go again. And I hope it’s like this every time.

Xiaonanmen

   I had always wanted to come to Asia. It’s not a secret that Japan is and will always be my priority and my weakness, but I really wanted to set foot in the Asian Giant and walk in these streets so different than the ones I know. I wanted to como to China and experience it by myself, and when I had the opportunity I didn’t hesitate and jumped into this adventure that sometimes I find myself trying to assimilate.

Contrasts

   I don’t know much from China, I have to be frank, apart from Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou or Xi’An I was completely lost with this country, but that was not a reason to stop. Avoiding the advices from my good friend Flapy, I ended up at Shanghai, the most international city in China and the one where the progress in the last 20 years has been really fast, so fast than the old people sometimes get lost because they do not recognise their own city.

Market

   From the begining, something was not good between Shanghai and me, because, yes, a lot of luxurious buildings, modern, but... Where was the REAL Shanghai? Where the streets in which you can see the sky? Where the kids playing? Well, I found it, with the good help of my friends and by a mistake when we were looking for a Christmas Market, the one we still think it never existed.

   This market was supposed to be next to something called “Cool Docks”, and Google Maps told us to go next to that fake beach at the Bund, where the water from the Yanpu River is “clean”. Trying to get there we went trough this area that any laowai reached before, or so it seemed by the way people looked at us. If you want to visit this pinturesque area, just take Line 9 to Xiaonanmen and there, you have to walk a little bit and you’ll be in what should be the closest thing to the real Shangahi.

Xiaonanmen

   This is an area with old and ruined houses, some even without roofs, but it’s still alive and fighting with the clock, because that Sunday afternoon we move to the streets and it was a neigborhood very busy. Across the street, just changing to the other sidewalk , there are enormous and luxurious buildings, but they have something in common: they are empty.

   The neighborhood of Xiaonanmen will be soon the foundations for new siblings for these big buildings, because this neighborhood is a small rock in the new Shanghai,  in the race that Shanghai is racing against modernity.

  

   Most of people looked at us puzzled, because maybe a few foreigners wanted to go there, but after 2 minutes they went back to their own business. Without mentioning the famous electric bikes from Shanghai, we could enjoy what might be called a part of the Old Shanghai, where the shops are outside, the doors of the houses are wideopen, people eat at a small wooden table on the sidewalk, with the wash machines on the street…

Dinner

   You could think poverty is everywhere in this neigborhood, when you look at the houses and only with a small wind they can crumble, but then you see that they have a good car, so maybe life it’s not that bad. Only in China. You can see chicken hanging from the windows, hens on the street waiting for being the dinner, children following us everywhere…Anecdotes that made that freezing Sunday in December deserve it.

    Eventually we arrived at Cool Docks, but there was nothing, because the market was in EAST DOCKS (thanks Nate for misinformation!), So we went to the Shanghai’s fake beach, some photos of the famous skyline of Shanghai from another angle, we set out to retrace our steps, but this time we decided to try the other way, less "picturesque" and where I could take one of my favorite photos from that afternoon.

Shanghai 2013

 Family Mart signboard was the signal, because we were living in a time that was not ours, and this signal was inviting us to the reality that it is always running and will not stop not even to tie their shoes.

    Are these types of neighborhoods, of images that I want to capture, not only the tall skyscrapers that everyone sees. I’m looking for the hidden China in Shanghai, the real one, which was lost in crystals and high construction cranes, which many people hate because it’s dirty,  because it is not in a book. It’s not so hard to find, but if it is easy to overlook. This is the China that want to know. 

If you want to see more pictures from that evening, check my Flickr