I’m back in the UK, back in the crisp English surprisingly cold air (close to freezing at night already…come on UK, really?!), back in my middle England Staffordshire house, trying to make sense of my (temporary?) return…where I should be living, where I should be existing…North or South? Everything seems to be temporary for me right now and it’s a strange feeling. I’ll talk more about the end of Shanghai and China, the UK (new) beginnings and a recent four-day London adventure next time. I’ve already so much done but it’s me! You should know by now I have an inability to sit still. I got back to my house at 6pm last night and rearranged all the furniture in my front room…for no reason whatsoever…I should have gone for a cycle really. I’ll do that today…it’s too quiet here.
One of the best things today was waking up to this skate video ‘ORDOS’ by Charles Lanceplaine that features, and collaborates with, a handful of my Shanghai friends who I am missing so much right now! I’ve spoken about my relationship with skate before. Great to see my friend, the one and only b man (Brian Dolle) on there. He screwed his ankle up skating this on this tour, hope it’s finally better! Also good to see Gustav Nyman on there too. The soundtrack is by another very good friend Hamacide and a great Shanghai group AM444 (with Chacha) who I’ve seen play many times back in Shanghai. It made me feel quietly content watching this….so serene, instinctive exploration and one unforgettable time.
‘ORDOS’…I’ve heard about this place before in relation to China’s ever-growing “ghost towns”…failures of new and re-negotiations of urban infrastructures and city planning. They sound and look like something else, as you can see in this video. Pretty spectacular. Located in Inner Mongolia, ‘ORDOS’ was built for 1 million people but currently inhabited by just a few thousand, called the Dubai of northern China. I’d love to visit and document places like this in China…future research perhaps? Until then “just skate”…
Rachel Marsden's Words 