November 9th 2007 - November 13th 2008

one year on foot - 4646km through China

unlimited beard & hair growth

thelongestway.com

musical score by the kingpins ( myspace.com/theoneandonlykingpins ) and zhu fengbo

Additional info:

- I never finished my original goal of walking to Germany. Instead, I walked for a year and roughly 4500km, passed the desert of Gobi, and then decided to stop walking for now.

- All of the distance from Beijing to Ürümqi has been completed solely on foot, straight good old walking. There are instances where you can see me in the video sitting on a plane or riding a boat, but those are during breaks I had to take from walking, either to sort out bureaucracy issues or to take care of some personal things.

- I had been planning this trip for over a year before I even started, and getting as far as I got was an experience for which I am very grateful.

- Obtaining the necessary visa for a trip like this was not very easy, hence I had to go back to Beijing a few times to resolve some issues.

- The songs I used in the video are 1) Zhu Fengbo - "Olive Tree" and 2) The Kingpins - "L'aventurier" - visit the Kingpins website if you want to know more, they are very cool I think.

- This is not a strict "1 pic a day" video, because I wanted to make it a bit more alive by adding some additional movement. Sometimes during the film you would follow me turn around, or something would happen in the background. I tried to capture these moments to make the video more interesting.

- The core of this project is in fact my website "www.thelongestway.com" where I have posted my extensive travel diary, starting from day 1 (Nov 9th 2007) and describing every single day until the end one year later.

Together with my colleague Henny Swan I've been working in the China Beijing office for the last few weeks which has been really interesting both in terms of getting to know the country and also the state of web standards in China.

For visitors, coming to an Olympic city where so many aspects of life — clothing, conversation, food, everything — are staged is only going to cause more confusion about China when the returning waiguoren tell their stories about Beijing. Expats burn when travel writers and foreign journalists make simplistic generalization, but, with half the Beijing story hidden, I’m sure we’ll see a lot more of it. And this will only reinforce the commonly-held belief that Westerners just can’t understand China. (Or the commonly-held belief that China’s all ancient temples and KFCs. Either or!)

Beijing Airport Express (机场快轨; jichang kuaigui) opens up to the public today at 14:00. CNReviews reported on the Beijing Airport Express back on 6/27, when the inservice date was originally 7/1, but the launch date has been in flux ever since.

Urban forestry in Beijing

After issuing regulations in 2001 allowing only male poplars and willows to be planted, city authorities now plan to inject many of the remaining female trees with growth inhibitors to stop them reproducing and producing the blossoms.”

An iPhone purchased in Shanghai or Beijing typically costs about $555. To unlock the phone and add Chinese language software costs an additional $25.

Literary infighting is rarely as gripping as it has been in China this year. The battle royale between Mian Mian, 29, and Wei Hui, 27—both apparently vying for recognition as China's "bad girl of letters"—has captivated even those who have not read their remarkably similar and steamy novels about sex, drugs and dropout chic. In April, Beijing banned both books. Soon U.S. readers will have a chance to see why, when both are published in the States. Here is an advance look, in the first English-language excerpts from the novels.

Meeting Place FotoFest Beijing 2006

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