Diving into the Yangtze river
Wuhan & Xining
Early August 2010
And after a day of filming in Shenzhen, the Converse trip starts… Rolling on a W+K shoot = a lot of luggage!
Besides me being the DOP and Cameraman, we had two great filmers along, Dana from Canada and Danny from Shenzhen. But the list doesn’t stop here… We also had a team manager along, three producers, one director, an assisting cameraman, one editor, one from the creative department, two personal assistants, two location managers, three skaters and a bunch of locals… Yes around twenty people at some points for a skate trip… It was pretty epic!
After a short train ride to central china, we arrived in Wuhan. Quite industrial but has a pretty interesting touch to it, as well as a couple unique spots parallel to the river.
Wuhan is not as tamed to foreigners as some other eastern cities by the coast. Dana and I were getting drinks by the hotel and Dana being the most foreign looking creature on the face on the Western Hemisphere, led to a small girl crying in the store.
Getting married and increasing the population!
Making the Middle Kingdom ever larger!
Probably the most amusing experience in Wuhan was to dive into the Yangtze River from the platform. Dana topped it all with a surprising canadian backflip into the river… blew my mind!
Nikki from Converse.
One of my favorites!
Shotgunning beers and skating the terminal at the airport! ONLY in China will you get away filming lines while getting drunk right before catching your flight!
After some turbulence and sketchy landing, we arrived in central western China, Xining.
Xining lays in the Qinghai province in central-western China.
Dongguan Mosque.
Going to Xi’an always feels like a trip, seeing the Islam influence within the Chinese culture is something still new and interesting in my eyes. Going to Xining was definitely a degree more Muslim. Seeing three cultures combined in one, Chinese, Hui (Muslim) and Tibetan is quite a change after mainly seeing pure Chinese on the coast.
Thrasher Wallride, before breaking his foot on some other new unique spot in the west…
Thrasher was finished, only two skaters left…
One of the monks here was a friend of Xu Ying. Check the one on the right wearing fake Adidas with four stripes…
Xu Ying, warrior from the north…
Not often do I get goose bumps when I hear people sing, but while we were dining in a Xinjiang cuisine restaurant, we kept hearing someone sing opera a couple rooms away. The man pointing was able to chant some traditional Mongolian songs, as well as classical Italian opera… I wish photos would record audio…
The sign on the left says “Western Medicine”… This says it all, modern takes out traditional medicine.
