There are those moments when you feel the weight of history pressing on you — that awestruck realization that a great moment happened here, and now you’re bearing witness. Maybe you’ve ducked into a tower while on the Great Wall. Or you’re standing just inside the Lincoln Memorial. The thing is, I never expected to have that feeling while standing in my basement, squinting up at an unidentified roll of film. But that’s what happened to me last Sunday, as I was searching through an old shoebox from my parents labeled “photos.”

I found a black film canister at the bottom of the box, the kind that stores unused film rolls. But what I pulled out of that canister, protected by a small twist of tissue paper, was instead a tightly wrapped roll of already processed negatives. Holding them up to the light, I saw… what looked like black-and-white negatives of Tiananmen Square. With some kind of giant white figure holding what could be a torch. And that’s when I felt it. The history.

I had no idea why or how my parents had these pictures. They had never said anything about them. But I had to find out what they were, so I went to get them printed. I came back with two sets of photos, one from a march to Tiananmen Square, and one from the short period of time when the Goddess of Democracy rose over the crowds. I believe the photos were from my uncle, who was an art student in Beijing in 1989. I didn’t know that he had taken pictures, or that he had somehow gotten those pictures to my parents, who were already in America.

There’s so much to see in these photos. Every time I look at them, I spot something new. People laughing in the background. Balloons in the air. A surprising number of little kids around the square. Many of the articles I’ve read on the 25th anniversary of June 4th talk about memory, whether Chinese people choose to remember or forget. In one of my uncle’s photos, a sign on the Monument to the People’s Heroes says, “The People Will Not Forget 1989.” So let’s look, and remember.

For more of these photos, visit The China Girls.

Photo: Catherine Henriette, AFP/Getty Images, via USA Today

Matthew Niederhauser, who’s putting finishing touches on a film called Kapital Creation that documents Beijing’s development, recently uploaded a Vimeo featuring stunning aerial footage of this city. It’s interesting how a simple rotation of perspective can completely change how we view a place — and makes you realize the value of a window office atop a skyscraper (or a blimp). Watch the video; you’re unlikely to find urban Beijing rendered more beautifully.

The music is greeN by White+. Some screenshots:

In case you didn’t click through the Kapital Creation link, here’s the excellent preview for Niederhauser’s movie (made in conjunction with director/cinematographer John Fitzgerald):

Here’s a map unlike any you’ve likely seen. A Chinese artist, using water and ink, has reimagined Chinese provinces as dually simple and abstruse classical paintings. As posted on the website Portal (Chuansongmen), these are hand-drawn outlines of provinces and special administrative regions that are then filled in with splashes of watercolor. We don’t quite know what to make of it — neither does Beyond Chinatown, which has translated the province names. Maybe that’s for the better: let these depictions defy easy classification.

Now it’s up to someone to put these provinces together like a jigsaw.

Here’s Beijing:

And Shanghai:

And Hong Kong:

And the armpit of Beijing, Tianjin:

Our favorite is Anhui:

But Yunnan is certainly colorful, which makes sense considering the province’s diversity.

But Henan had to be a sandy splotch of yellow, didn’t it? Poor Henan:

More here. If you want to play a fun game, see how many of the provinces and regions you can identify below before clicking over to Chuansongmen for the answers:

(H/T Reddit)

China’s obsession with Transformers is evident in box office revenue, filming location (Transformers: Age of Extinction has scenes from Wulong county in Chongqing), and this massive Optimus Prime in Kunming. We can now add another chapter to the legend, thanks to “repairmen” in Jinan, Shandong province.

As People’s Daily tells us, Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and “more than 20 other ‘autobots’” were made “of discarded parts by some repairmen in 20 days.” One of the Transformers is reportedly 16 meters tall and weighs five tons. “Twenty days” by “repairmen,” eh?

However these were produced, they’re glorious:

Not sure why this one doesn’t measure up to size though:

More in the link below.

Transformers made by Chinese repairmen (People’s Daily)

Wei Gensheng is a professional crane operator. Maybe he should think about changing professions, because these pictures are breathtaking, probably the best we’ve seen of Shanghai’s skyline. Wei won second prize at the Shanghai City Photography Competition with these, which were snapped 2,000 feet (610 meters) above ground on the Shanghai Tower. (The building will be the world’s second tallest, behind the Burj Khalifa, when it’s completed later this year.)

The Daily Mail and Guardian appear to have gotten the jump on all of us with this story, first publishing some of these pictures in November, but the images have just begun to recirculate this week. Check out more via Bored Panda.

George HW Bush painting his dog and the Red Wedding are also highlights.

(H/T Katie)

Photographer Zhang Kechun first got the idea to walk along the Yellow River in 2008, and for two years, he did just that, documenting “images of life,” as Slate’s photo blog Behold puts it, along with “flooding, pollution, and destruction caused by China’s push to modernize.”

Slate has published nine of Zhang’s photos, some of which we sample below. They are mesmerizing, and in the muted colors, the shades of yellow, plaintive and doleful, like a faint dirge on the banks of China’s great northern waterway.

Life Along China’s Yellow River (Behold, Slate)

It’s the lead pic from the New York Times’s story today about how China’s current leaders were molded by the events of 1989.

For four days, more than 400 of China’s brightest political minds gathered in smoke-clouded halls at a Beijing hotel, vigorously debating the nation’s future.

It was April 1989, and after a decade of economic transformation, China faced a clamor for political liberalization. Days later, protests erupted in Tiananmen Square, and the lives of those at the meeting took radically different turns. Several are now national leaders, including Li Keqiang, China’s prime minister. Others ended up in prison or exile, accused of supporting the demonstrations that shook the Communist Party and ended with soldiers sweeping through the city on June 4, shooting dead hundreds of unarmed protesters and bystanders.

The caption for the photograph, which was taken by AFP, reads: “Student protesters faced police officers in Tiananmen Square in April 1989 while grieving for Hu Yaobang, a former Communist Party leader and liberal whose death set off the protests.”

Elite in China Molded in Part by Tiananmen (NYT)

Without a doubt, Hong Kong is a vertically oriented city, with vertiginous towers built upon mountains and hills and other daunting inclines. Which is why we’re happy to encounter graphic artist/photographer Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze’s rendering of the city in “Vertical Horizon,” a project that strives to see Hong Kong as measly mortals must.

“Fisheye lenses bend the edges of the photos to make it curvy, while my lens doesn’t,” he told Wall Street Journal. “I think it fits better architectural shots and it’s more faithful to reality.”

He used a “wide-angle Sigma lens with a 10 mm focal length,” reports WSJ, and took photos between January and July of last year. A few more sample photos follow, but a fuller slideshow is here.

His exhibition is at Hotel Panorama by Rhombus until June 24.

Dizzyingly Vertical Hong Kong (Scene Asia, WSJ, h/t Rob Hogg)

Last week I got an invite to roll with some musician buddies up at Midi Festival and decided it’d be a great opportunity to grab a camera and capture the people and fashions that only “the biggest rock festival” in China can provide.

Undeterred by the lack of a fucking functional website, the promise of awe-inspiring traffic, and the threat of hours of shitty metal, I took a whiskey-soaked ride up to the Beijing Yuyang International Ski Resort and brought back photos from the Pulp Fiction/Sid and Nancy/The Last Waltz/skate video some kids from Ohio would make/Betty Boop/Hot Topic Lookbook fever dream that was Midi Festival 2013.

First up, just a great mix of people tenting it up…

…love that both dudes on the left got the “cowboy attire” memo and brought very different interpretations to the table.

It was only after I’d been working on this — …photo-essay? vertical slideshow? whatever, anyway, looking at the above picture — for a while did I realize that her shirt also said “Will work for weed.” Loving the heart eye-socketed skull kneepads.

Believe it or not, marijuana was a popular motif at the festival.

I think this next photo is most representative of the Midi experience: beautiful verdant hills, trash everywhere, inexplicable headwear decisions.

“History will remember you” Woof.

Blue hair. Sure. Appreciate the Phish fan-feel he’s bringing.

Okay, we come across persons in our meanderings whom we recognize utilize a decision-making process so unlike your own, their mere presence on earth confirms that we inhabit a vast, diverse, seemingly unfathomable existence. Dude rocking a tiger silk-screened face-scarf and high-school lab-issued safety goggles is that person for me.

Sigh :(

I’m somebody who owned his fair share (a lot) of Rocawear and Sean John in high school, but you couldn’t have paid me to wear someone’s goddamn record label across my head. And especially not when their newest single is this tepid mess. Sorry, but you’ve got to be a fucking clown to wear a goddamn YMCMB hat.

I’m still mad I had to listen to that Tapout nonsense, so I’m going to make this short. Slip-on fake tattoo sleeves are the Confucius Peace Prize/Obama’s backbone when battling House Republicans/Avicii of the body modification scene.

They weren’t in uniform for anything, they weren’t working a stand, they were just three bros rocking the same shirt at a music festival. But wait, let’s consult some Chinese Rock literature: “Of course, the influence of my idol was obvious: just like Kurt, I never neglected to drop a ‘shit’ or a ‘fuck’ into my songs and soon I began aping Cobain’s blue-and-white striped sailor shirt and ripped jeans look. Fortunately, the Chinese navy uniform was based on that of the British army, so the military surplus stores in China were full of striped sailor shirts just like Kurt’s.” — Liu Jian (刘健), Rock Soldier (战士)

(Yes, this guy.)

So these dudes are rocking the original Chinese rock and roll shirt. O-fucking-G.

Who knew you’d learn something on Beijing Cream today.

Ostensibly friendly, but as a rule, I don’t trust any white people with dreads or people wearing Canadian tuxedos.

Great headwear. Big fan of the subtle him/hers matching leopard print. Also a big fan of the possible vag tattoo Selina Kyle is rocking next to the dead-eyed disembodied head on his arm there.

Only when I was going back through my pictures did I realize I took a picture of this couple twice, apparently thrown off by Mathilda’s transforming Leon: The Professional shades. Here’s the second time:

By far, the biggest missed opportunity of the day was neglecting to ask the FuWuYuan to combine all three into some kind of Elvis-themed American mouth bomb. But…wait a second, there’s something weird going on with that flag. Can we enhance? ENHANCE!

While it’s possible (likely) those non-stars are just the result of a shitty printing job, I’d rather assume it’s a limited edition Robert G. Heft x Invader sticker. Way better than the Jacques-Louis David x Mr. Brainwash print that is just the French flag splashed by a grad student/intern with a bucket of neon green paint.

I’ve been seeing this logo around, and I’ve been trying to figure it out. Mostly, why the Bulls? Have you seen the Bulls? They start two Dukies, the son of a French tennis pro, Kurt Heinrich, and a guy who tweets about making his own sushi. (To be fair, Jimmy Butler got abandoned by both of his parents by the time he was 13 and ended up a first-round draft pick, but still, 20% gangsta does not cut it.) So, right, not exactly the Jailblazers. [Note - this was written after the Bulls embarrassed my fucking Nets, and before they came out big-dick-swinging against the Heat.] Then what? Weird, slightly off-color, social commentary on the appalling Chicago murder rate? That would be… peculiar, but further digging reveals, alas.

“WHOOO, that’s a banging fucking hot dog.”

“Yo, that chick was kind of hot but kind of looked like Ronald McDonald.” — One of my aforementioned musician friends.

Gotta love the studded beanie. Less feeling the matching tie-dye watermelon shirts.

And finally,  let’s bring it home here. A lot to unpack. Sartorially, we’ve got a US flag bandana, the classic Chinese girl cute/morbid smiling skulls with roses, some solid tattoo work, a pink heart earring, and a lip stud. Homeboy has a great collection of random patterns inked on his arms, and then some sort of ICP clown head. We also have two, possibly three instances of leopard print going on in this picture, because, as those of us following the trends out of the fashion mecca Bangalore know, “2013 has anyways been dedicated to animal prints with many international apparel designers embracing the trend. Their inspiration has been the Chinese calendar which marks 2013 as the year of the snake.”

All that said, I think this picture best captures the essence of disparate styles and influences that Voltrons into a coherent culture. Despite our understanding of how or why an “authentic” scene is constructed. So yeah, while rock and roll in China was only introduced 30 years ago by a Korean (minority) in Beijing, and seems to be solely inhabited by people who dress by Baidu image searching “rock fashion” and buying just whatever appears on the screen, the experience of being amongst this energized community on the hills couldn’t help but give you the sense that there’s something real here, even if it looks nothing like we imagine (but for the most part sounds exactly like you imagine, which is a whole other blog post).

And anyway, sixty years of intimate engagement with the history and presence of rock and roll in the West has culminated with the Coldplay afterbirth that is Imagine Dragons, so I mean, like, fuck, whatever, you know?

Gabriel Clermont is BJC’s video editor. Follow him on Twitter @gabrieltrane and check out his work on Three Shots With.

There are moments in the history of this blog when a joke would be superfluous. Gaze, as a zealot might upon his god.

Via China Daily.

I daresay it might be the best thing Sina/Beijing Review/China.org has done. Go give them some love.

UPDATE, 3/27, 2:15 pm: Photographer Wei Yao explains how it was done.

(H/T Malcolm Moore)

Beijing’s sky during the two sessions (China.org)

Kudos go out to The Atlantic for the launch of its new section, China Channel. In the introduction, overseeing editor Matt Schiavenza describes this country as “a defining story in the contemporary world,” and articulates the desire “to sustain a closer, clearer exploration.”

They start with a collection of pictures from Tom Carter, author of CHINA: Portrait of a People. You might have seen some of these before, but it’s a good reminder that, as Carter writes, “China is not just one place, one people, but 33 distinct regions populated by 56 different ethnicities, each with their own languages, customs and lifestyles.” 

A small sampling:

Photographer Thomas Arne Strand alerted us last week to a collection of pictures he took of the Drum and Bell neighborhood, which he posted last Sunday. As he writes:

These photographs were taken at the beginning of January (been traveling and unable to upload before), after I learnt that the wrecking ball would soon come to the neighborhoods surrounding the historic Drum and Bell Towers (Gulou and Zhonglou). There has been (to my knowledge) a single mention in the state run media.

There is much controversy surrounding the clearance of these communities. I don’t have much to add to the debate, living with no plumbing or heating can’t be fun, but it is sad to see another slice of old Beijing life vanish.

Duly inspired, I went down to Gulou — which, as authorities promised, is changing — and snapped a few pics myself, including the one up top. A couple more:

For more professional photos, check out Strand’s blog. The rest are from him:

Zhonglou and Gulou Hutongs (Thomas Arne Strand)