About China's Coolest Cars
A man in a white hat approaching me on a summer’s day on a road in old central Beijing sometime in 2010. He came with the sun! He was related to the woman sitting on the horse cart on the other side, and curious why I was curious about them. In the process, I took one of my best pictures ever. Thank you, man in white hat. It was just that one moment in time. Continue reading “A Man With A White Hat In Beijing”
A tricycle carrying fish pods filled with gold fish, seen in Nanjing in 2011. The golden creatures were sold for a few yuan each, depending on the fish’s size and relative rarity. Buyers carry their new pet home in a small plastic bag. They could also buy fish food.
Selling gold fish, and other small animals, off tricycles was very common in China until 2018 or so. Today these paddle pet shops are a rarity in the big cities but they are still common down country. The seller in Nanjing was on a popular spot doing good business, I remember seeing lots of kids buying, and some of his tanks were already empty when I took the picture.
More beer! A Beijing-branded tricycle carrying empty bottles of Yanjing beer, standing in front of a neighborhood beer distribution point. The blue crates behind the trike are filled with new bottles of delicious Yanjing beer. The green crates are for Tsingtao beer but they too are filled with Yanjing bottles.
I saw this tricycle in the hutongs of central Beijing when Yanjing beer bottles still contained 0.645 liter of easy drinkable beer with an alcohol percentage of 3.6%. In my good old days I drunk a truck of the stuff each week. Sadly, most Chinese beer makers have since changed their bottle size to the internationally more acceptable 0.5 liter.
Back then many people in China still preferred to drink their beer at room-temperature instead of cooled. So at distribution points beer was mostly kept uncooled and out in the open. Cheers!
Going back to Tiananmen Square in 2011 I met these interesting camera vans. They look kind of funny but they actually are fully mobile police camera vehicles, able to control and inspect large areas of town. Continue reading “Hongma Camera Vans In Beijing”
Saturday night is always a good time for tanks. Back in 2011 I went to the Marco Polo Bridge and the adjacent museum in the faraway suburbs of Beijing. The museum had lots of cool stuff including a T-34 tank and a T-34 recovery vehicle.
Continue reading “Time for Tanks! A T-34 Tank & T-34 Recovery Vehicle”
That day in 2008 I was on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. It was an exceptionally busy at the square. Workers were preparing the giant space for the traditional October celebrations and for the start of the Olympic Games on October 8.
This is a personally historical photo because it was the first photo I took with my brand new China-made Nokia telephone, which I got in the great year of 2003. Photo quality was still far worse compared to a real camera, which I always carried with me until 2012, when I deemed the iPhone good enough for street pics.
The picture shows a typical street not far from my home in the Dongzhimen area, with 1970’s 6-floor apartment buildings on the left side. It must have been winter, the trees are leafless and the air looks cold. A woman in a brown jacket tried to ruin my picture but failed.
The Hafei minivan is still clearly visible. It is a standard-roof passenger variant. The blue 京A license plate indicate this is a very early privately owned car. Blue A’s are very rare nowadays but back in 2003 I had no idea about that. May I be able to look into the future in my next Hafei life.
A foreign model with huge tits recommends a C-cup breast augmentation in a taxi in Beijing in 2009, I think it was in a Citroen ZX. The advertisement was on a magazine holder on the back of the driver’s seat. I guess they thought this was a smart advertising strategy as many girls take taxis, without and with their boyfriends.
A black Hyundai Tucson, seen on a highway south of Beijing in April 2006. The Hyundai has a very interesting sticker on the back, saying, in English and Japanese: “Japan apalogize to NanKing!” with the date 1937.12.13. Continue reading “Hyundai Tucson Urges To Apologize In China”
A brown donkey pulling a two-wheel carriage, seen in 2011 in the far east of Beijing. The carriage carries a load of bricks, a gentleman with a reins, and a little lady fast asleep.