Veleur, Aug 10, 2008

It’s been a week since I took the photos for this post, but I remember the ride clearly enough. I passed through all the areas of the previous rides, but I saw something new.

I began right in the busy heart of GZ, just between two huge shopping malls. I had seen these fibreglass cartoon figures and been curious about them, so it seemed like a good place to start. It also set the tone for the veleur, which is about ruins.

They are in a small overgrown area, squashed between the busy road and another construction zone wall. I clambered onto the little dias and took some photos, trying out my new flash gear. I am not sure how old the figures are or even why they are there: they are anomalous remnants, left behind like so much else. Perhaps they were there to wave farewell to people leaving a tiny amusement park. Now they face a blank wall, pockmarked faces, faded paint, and holes belying their smiles.

I stopped to get a shot of a tree then went into another pedestrian tunnel, one of the things I love about GZ because on sunny days it allows me to get those overexposed shots I love. The tunnel is cared for, but also left, with its advertising cases blankly staring, and other parts of the tunnels acting as storage areas.

I rode through the construction area and headed for the big bridge over the Pearl. I got a flat just on the other side of the river, just when I was thinking about how I always saw people with flats getting repaired. It was another stifling day in GZ, and I was carrying my new backpack. It was comfortable while riding since I wasn’t really supporting any weight, but it was heavy walking. I rested in the shade of a shack where the garbage collectors dump their loads and store their hand carts.

I got my bearings there, looking for the main road where I could probably find a small repair place. I found one where I thought I might, near a massive overpass and intersection where nomadic bicycle mechanics wait, and where men wait for work, drill presses and tools mounted to their bicycles. I asked a couple of guys and they pointed out a small shop where I had my flat fixed for 2 yuan.

Again, I must comment on how different the sides of the river are. The south is the wrong side of the tracks. Older Guangzhou and not as developed or worldly and where a white-guy on a bike gets more stares. I wanted to ride back to the park by the convention centre and headed down that now familiar road. But along the way I saw one of the small canals which shoots off of the Pearl, and which run through the city like capillaries. A wrecked boat lay stranded just off shore, so off I went.

Once there I saw what I thought was an abandoned fishing village just down from the boat. Dilapidated looking buildings sagged at the water’s edge. Riding up I saw the sign of inhabitation: a clothesline. It was something I was going to see in other unlikely places. I could have wandered into the area but I thought that would be too intrusive, so I just tried to get a shot of the place.

From there I rode along the river on an abandoned sidewalk. I guess that what I had assumed to be new sidewalks and parks when I first started this project are old ones, now left to their own devices and slowly being reclaimed by grass and the river. A thick coating of river sludge coated the lower sidewalk which made riding rough going and a bit dangerous at times. I came to what I thought was a new apartment building but was actually and old one.

At the end of the long courtyard was a basketball net and above that, on a little knoll, was an old shack, overgrown with the vines that snake along the ground. It’s a nice image that sums up a lot of the peculiar feelings I get from areas like this. It’s echoed in the shots from the park at the convention hall, the same one I passed a month ago on my first ride. It’s like wandering through a ghost town, a strange wasteland which people suddenly left. It reminds me of all the post-apocalyptic movies of late. All the zombie landscapes left in haste. Not ruins, but fading memories, like ancient ruins as they were digested by the jungle.

Veleur August 3, 2008

Veleur August 3, 2008

I started out late at about 9am. After the first two veleurs, I had learned something and stopped at a local stall to get some Chinese bread things to keep my energy up. I wasn’t feeling quite up to the day and my eyes didn’t feel sharp. Photos didn’t seem to appear like they sometimes do, but, like working through writer’s block, you have to persist.

I biked along the north side of the Pearl River. There is a wonderful, wide sidewalk but it’s an interrupted experience since walls erupt randomly. Pockets of people collect: fisherman, taxi-drivers playing cards, people napping on the benches, groups of men, and an assortment of loners staring out numbly over the river.
One area I had been before is now being walled off, and I am sure it will be impassable shortly. A group of workers was building a small shed for some reason. They didn’t mind me taking pictures but nothing worked out. The energy you get when taking photos you feel are interesting was elusive. At the other end of the site, it was better, and I dragged out the RB for few shots. Working with it is becoming smoother and I have to worry about it a little less.

After several other starts and stops the trail ended at a small pier, ships lying waiting. I could the clickety-clack of mahjong tiles from inside the boat. Outside, a small table held a bucket with a fish and dinner essentials. It smelled heavily of paint and I wondered how people could eat with such a smell.

A small viaduct flowed by, with a holding pond on one side in which a fisherman had strung a net. He pulled it in as his son helped and a group of boys watched. Then the boys stripped down and dove in.

I had seen people swimming in the Pearl before, down near Shamian Dao, and it’s alarming. I grew up with my parents warning me of catching typhoid fever from simply touching the river that wound through my hometown, so to see people frolicking in brown water that has flowed through umpteen towns spilling waste into it causes me to flinch. The boys had fun though, climbing up and jumping in, heedless of me and my camera despite their lack of bathing suits or, in one case, clothing altogether.

I turned away and rode on at that point, feeling voyeuristic and that I was invading some kind of private space they had created in this most public of spots.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I am interested in the way people interact with their space. I like to place people as small objects at the edges of the frame. The space isn’t theirs, but there is a statement of claim, as if it their presence which transforms it. It’s something that has interested me since my move here to Guangzhou. I haven’t quite worked it out, but people here make their privacy and, I guess, give it to others.

Riding on, another pier at a large factory, but as I rode past a rusty, gapped, gate, I saw a familiar lock. While taking pictures the guard from across the street came over. When I told him I was simply shooting the lock he sort of shook his head and walked off, content I was harmless. It was good to see this and perhaps begin another series of shots and these tie in with some ideas I have about China: the idea that is a tightly policed and controlled society when, in fact, it’s quite chaotic and open. Something else I haven’t quite worked out.

Past the locks the whole road ended abruptly, back at the bridge which I crossed in my first ride. Crossing it I stopped at the view of the new apartment compound built at the edge of the old pier site with its green slough. I wasn’t happy with the previous shots and it wasn’t working this time so I decided to try a collage, something which I hadn’t done in a while. Time will tell if that works out since I have to piece it all together. That’s the thing about making a photograph rather than taking it: trying to get something that says what you want. This is where the interpretation of the scene comes to the fore.
Across the bridge I was determined to move close to that goal of the jungle and the amusement park, so I turned left. A bumpy dirt road led through to an older hutong type place. And there, only a few hundred metres in, was a place where I would stop for the day: some kind of rocky waterfront where people were playing in the water.

Again, no bathing suits and more than the occasional naked child, but it was all fine. A poor German Shepherd sat in a tiny cage, panting in the heat but thankfully shaded from what little sun there was.

A group of children saw me and swam over to perform. Eventually a few ended up running along a stone wall and jumping into the water. Had I been in my riding shorts I think I would have joined them, it looked like so much fun and something I had never done in my youth.

The deadline which I had set came and I left, stopping on the way back when I passed a toilet incongruously sitting in a crumbled room.

We get August 8 off—a nice bonus from the company—so I plan to avoid the glaring heat of the sun and try a night veleur on Thursday.