Markuswelder wanders around Northern China.

[Markuswelder]

Are you using a data plan from a carrier outside of China? In the large cities, those seem to work well. You seem to be further afield.

This is a great set- all places away from the large cities.

No. Wifi seems to be everywhere, well, anywhere we stay. We kind of base ourselves at my Wife's Mums place, then travel around from there, so no issues with that. The Great firewall blocks access to a lot of sites, FB, Flickr and lots of others, I'm quite happy not being connected to social media all the time. I don't really bother uploading images when travelling, I just take a few SD cards and use them like 35mm film. Sometimes I've not even bothered with any sort of computer device, just taken my phone. I went to NZ over Christmas/New year just gone, and I took my Intel Skull Canyon i7 NUC plus a 15.6" portable USB-C monitor. That worked pretty well, the USB-C monitor needs no power, it has cr@ppy in-built speakers so all you need is a single power point, a small Bluetooth keyboard/touchpad and you're away. Not really any bigger than a laptop, but a lot more useful. To me. Trip before that, just my phone. I did buy a local SIM card both times there, my Daughter and Son in law were also travelling at the same time, so made it easy to keep in touch and hook up here and there. This time I think I might take my tiny little Ryzen 7 7735 8 core 16 thread NUC, which is actually my main computer. I've got 4 TB of internal SSD storage in it, and another 1TB SSD in a very small enclosure. I'll be interested to see if I can access my NAS this trip, but not in the slightest bit concerned if I can't, between the SD cards and external storage I reckon I've got enough room for a couple of years shooting. Not months lol.
My phone is USB-C, it has removable micro SD cards, so that's another option, as I've also got a USB-C card reader that works a treat with it. We'll see

 

[Markuswelder]

Wow. Great pics, Markus. And great stories! Those sand dunes look huge indeed. The shot with the people climbing them shows the scale very well. It must be incredibly hard to climb to the top.

I didn’t know the Gobi desert could be this cold. It’s a desert so I would expect the opposite!

Isn’t it hard to breathe, with so much fine sand in the air?

Never actually noticed to be honest. We found it to be uncomfortable more than anything else. Sand in everything, shoes, socks, down your neck, in your jocks/underwear, in my camera bag, and so on You can see how the Wife tried to wrap herself up to avoid it It's more when you get off the beaten track, rather than just wandering around the city etc, that you really notice it.
I'm not complaining, more just commenting on what we experienced.

 

[Capn Jack]

No. Wifi seems to be everywhere, well, anywhere we stay. We kind of base ourselves at my Wife's Mums place, then travel around from there, so no issues with that. The Great firewall blocks access to a lot of sites, FB, Flickr and lots of others, I'm quite happy not being connected to social media all the time. I don't really bother uploading images when travelling, I just take a few SD cards and use them like 35mm film. Sometimes I've not even bothered with any sort of computer device, just taken my phone. I went to NZ over Christmas/New year just gone, and I took my Intel Skull Canyon i7 NUC plus a 15.6" portable USB-C monitor. That worked pretty well, the USB-C monitor needs no power, it has cr@ppy in-built speakers so all you need is a single power point, a small Bluetooth keyboard/touchpad and you're away. Not really any bigger than a laptop, but a lot more useful. To me. Trip before that, just my phone. I did buy a local SIM card both times there, my Daughter and Son in law were also travelling at the same time, so made it easy to keep in touch and hook up here and there. This time I think I might take my tiny little Ryzen 7 7735 8 core 16 thread NUC, which is actually my main computer. I've got 4 TB of internal SSD storage in it, and another 1TB SSD in a very small enclosure. I'll be interested to see if I can access my NAS this trip, but not in the slightest bit concerned if I can't, between the SD cards and external storage I reckon I've got enough room for a couple of years shooting. Not months lol.
My phone is USB-C, it has removable micro SD cards, so that's another option, as I've also got a USB-C card reader that works a treat with it. We'll see

That's my experience, too. My employer pays for data via AT&T when I travel overseas and I find I can access everything I can at home on the phone. In the cities, WiFi can be very slow (as of last November). I found that surprising in some of the "tech hub" areas. How is WiFi where you are? Maybe I'm spoiled because Lincoln, NE has gigabit+ internet almost everywhere. Singapore internet seemed slow too.

 

[Markuswelder]

Now where were we?
And the most famous of all the statues/caves. Cave 130, dug in the 7th century -taking 29 years to complete, houses a Maitreya Buddha statue that is the largest sculpture of the entire cave network. The 26 meter-high statue is typical of the style of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907). They actually figured that the statue was going to be viewed from ground level, so the corrected for perspective distortion by making the head & upper body larger than the lower body, to account for this. Pretty clever for back then I thought. Quite an interesting site to wander around, it also houses a huge collection of scrolls that document the area, the early Silk road, and history of the trade relations/history between the East and the West.

As we visited in late Winter, access was pretty good, it wasn't at all crowded, I got to see all I wanted with my personal, one on one tour guide.

Some of the early documentation teams efforts photographed.

Restoring some of the paintings

 

[Markuswelder]

One thing that did surprise me, for a Communist country, is the Art that seems to be around. Every city seems to have at least some artistic sculptures/structures, & I must say I was quite impressed with quite a lot of them.

Ran across this at the local Railway station. I think they were practising for some Dragon festival. A couple of the ladies actually insisted that I take their photo. I didn't know them from a bar of soap, yet never asked for a copy of the shots. Maybe they just liked me? Who knows.

It happened to be outside the local railway station

 

[Markuswelder]

That's my experience, too. My employer pays for data via AT&T when I travel overseas and I find I can access everything I can at home on the phone. In the cities, WiFi can be very slow (as of last November). I found that surprising in some of the "tech hub" areas. How is WiFi where you are? Maybe I'm spoiled because Lincoln, NE has gigabit+ internet almost everywhere. Singapore internet seemed slow too.

Yeah, same. Pretty slow, but I'm not sure what type of plans are available. I've also got gigabit interwebz at home, I still get 950mb + at peak times in the evenings, so it takes a little bit of getting used to. And why I'm happy just to store locally on my devices until I get home. My NAS is gigabit network speed, what I do is set up autosync between my local working folders on my NUC, download my SD cards there when I get home from shooting, & my NAS happily goes about its business syncing everything in the background. I still get lightning quick SSD access to my raw converter, when I finish edits I save to dated folders on my NAS. Works fluidly and seamlessly for me, without any real effort. I'd like to step up to a 2.5 gigabit NAS, maybe at a later date when hardware gets a bit cheaper. Then just use my existing one as remote backup.
I'm honestly in no way, shape or form a techie, just someone who enjoys tinkering with that sort of thing, mainly to make my life easier, once it's set up and running properly

 

[Markuswelder]

Whilst we're talking art, one of the Wife's friends took me for a look around an acquaintance's Art workshop. To say I was highly impressed is quite the understatement. Timber scraps that us Westerners would simply turn up our noses at, and hardly bother with even for firewood, is turned into beautiful artistic sculpture. Lots of vision to see and be able to use the natural features and incorporate them into your finished piece. Fabulous skills and workmanship.

 

[JohnPD]

@Markuswelder
Amazing thread, Markus. I am thoroughly enjoying this tour of China! Great stuff.

 

[Markuswelder]

@Markuswelder
Amazing thread, Markus. I am thoroughly enjoying this tour of China! Great stuff.

Glad you're enjoying it. It takes a bit more time than one would think, stringing it all together. Even one or two lines of text can take a reasonable amount of time to write and research a little, to ensure it's relatively accurate, and your memory hasn't betrayed you or played tricks on you Once again, not complaining, I actually quite enjoy it when I've got a bit of time to spare here and there.

 

[JohnPD]

Glad you're enjoying it. It takes a bit more time than one would think, stringing it all together. Even one or two lines of text can take a reasonable amount of time to write and research a little, to ensure it's relatively accurate, and your memory hasn't betrayed you or played tricks on you Once again, not complaining, I actually quite enjoy it when I've got a bit of time to spare here and there.

And it's greatly appreciated!

 

[RichardB]

Awesome thread!

 

[Darren75]

Edit -I almost forgot. Check out the facial features of this statue they dug up. How do you reckon that happened?

Did you blend your own face in?

 

[Markuswelder]

Did you blend your own face in?

Someone else was actually reading a book about the history of there, and mentioned that there may have been other nationalities in the army around that time. I can't remember the exact backstory about that photograph, it may have been the case. Here's another one. The accompanying text would seem to lend weight to that as well

 

[Markuswelder]

Somewhere along the way, I missed one little excursion.
Whilst we were near the Yardang Geological park/area, and heading back to Dunhuang city, we stopped off at the site of the Yanguan Pass ruins. The other of the two famous passes in the Gansu Province, on the Silk road corridor. They were building a Museum when we were there, I'd guess it would be well finished by now lol. A few shots.

This is a statue of Zhang Qian, who was sent by Emperor Wu as an Imperial envoy in 138 BCE, to central Asia. Yeah, 138 BC. Fairly interesting story/s behind it, his explorations and reports were quite instrumental in the establishment of the Silk road. Which was one of the big factors behind China's trading and cultural exchange with the West. Apparently he was captured by the Xiongnu, held captive for 10 years, before managing to escape and continuing his travels.


Apparently the City itself has been buried by sandstorms, the only thing remaining is some ruins of the old Watchtowers & signaling stations. There's also a bit of a local legend in the area, about buried treasure in the form of Gold coins and the like, after a wedding party for one of the Government officials daughters was ambushed by rebel soldiers, then swallowed up by a giant multi-day sandstorm. There's supposedly been Gold coins and other unexplained items/artifacts that have been found in and around the area over the years, so who really knows?

 

[Darren75]

Someone else was actually reading a book about the history of there, and mentioned that there may have been other nationalities in the army around that time. I can't remember the exact backstory about that photograph, it may have been the case. Here's another one. The accompanying text would seem to lend weight to that as well

The face just looks very modern, like a real life person, photographed today, hence my remark. Amazing.