Imagethief

Tag: Video

  • Imagethief and the lost apartment of Qin Shihuang

    Recently Imagethief and family went to Xi’an for a weekend. As everyone does, we went to see the terracotta warriors. That was fine, but the real highlight of the trip was the apartment we stayed in, which was decorated top-to-bottom in replica terracotta warriors and had a working Chinese-style guillotine. But, hey, it also had free Internet, a fridge full of very cheap beer, and was a five minute walk from the downtown ethnic Hui area, which has awesome food. At 500RMB a night, what wasn’t to like? A video tour of the apartment below. It was shot on a phone camera, so it’s not exactly Cinemascope, but it does include a guillotine demonstration!

    For those reading this on Facebook (which does not import the YouTube videos), the video is here. Photographs from the trip, including those in the video, are on Flickr here.

    The apartment was one of four owned and rented out by the day by a guy named Clarence Guo. Clarence used to be a taxi driver. After a few years shuttling tourists to and from the terracotta warriors he realized he could do better as a tour-guide and provider of what we shall call “themed lodging”, so he taught himself the history, wrote a book about the warriors, and bought and refurbished the apartments. We also hired him as our tour guide, which worked out pretty well although he’s clearly a bit burned out on the whole warrior thing after ten-odd years.

    I had only one complaint about the apartment. Despite having a toddler in tow, it was not the guillotine. It was that Clarence’s creative renovations left zero noise isolation between the apartments and there was an extremely loud family of Israeli tourists staying next door to us. But all in, it was a pretty good deal. E-mail me for Clarence’s phone numbe if you’re ever planning a trip to Xi’an and have no issues with guillotines or sleeping in a bedroom full of terracotta warriors, you can. More comments from customers on TripAdvisor.

    Update – China friendly version now online:

    China-friendly Tudou version now online since YouKu, my usual Chinese option, went into some kind of weird suck-fit and refused to let me upload — three times. Never happened before. For those not used to it, Tudou has a pre-roll ad and a heavily spangled presentation. You’ve been warned.

  • Diving with the whale shark at Dalian’s Tiger Beach

    Dive nerds: This weekend I went with Steven Schwankert of Sinoscuba to dive in the whaleshark tank at Dalian’s Tiger Beach Marine Park. Here’s a little video of the weekend’s fun. It was shot on an iPhone (I didn’t really plan on making a video), so please excuse any crappyness.

    Updates:

  • Imagethief and the top-secret dam of Panjiakou: A Great Wall diving adventure

    Regular readers will recall that Imagethief recently accompanied Steven Schwankert ofSinoscuba to dive a section of the Great Wall that lies underwater in a reservoir at Panjiakou, near Tangshan. A prior blog post about that trip is here. We had an Associated Press camera crew with us on that trip, and their video ran on various television networks. You can find online versions in which I offer various breathless quotes at at National Geographic and elsewhere.

    However, I also shot my own video, both at the surface and underwater. It’s about six minutes long and has a few more details than the AP segment, as well as a bit more of the singular Imagethief wit and the trademark oilskin hat and sunglasses. It’s now posted on YouTube. Enjoy, and consider it a break from the current flood of Olympic content (although there is a tangential Olympic connection).

    Various other odds and ends also on my YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/imagethief.

  • Imagethief and the man-eating otter of Changbaishan

    I’ve posted to YouTube a video of the trip I took to Changhbaishan last summer with Mrs. Imagethief and my father. It took me the better part of a year to get around to editing it, but here it is. Changbaishan is the rugged mountain range that divides northeast China from the Korean peninsula. There is a “nature reserve” a few hours drive outside of the town of Yanji, and that’s where we went. It’s a beatiful area, but also a major tourism waystation. As always, we had a pretty good time.


    This was shot on Mrs. Imagethief’s point-and-shoot digital camera, which also has a video function. I did a few make-it-up-as-I-go standups and cut those together with other footage mostly taken by Mrs. Imagethief and some of my photographs. There was a lot of a wind noise, so I’ve subtitled a couple of spots it might otherwise be hard to make out what is being said. It’s a hair under ten minutes. Enjoy.

  • Imagethief and the hell of yurts – video companion

    Note: This video was originally presented as the companion to a long, written travelogue that is no longer posted. I reposted the video when I restored my archives because it’s much more fun than the long-winded written version. -WM

    It’s no Danwei TV, but here is Imagethief’s foray into video production. During our recent trip to Xinjiang, Mrs. Imagethief used her point-and-shoot digital camera to take about eighteen minutes of video, including several off-the-cuff stand-ups by Imagethief. We hadn’t originally intended to do anything with it except show it with our travelling companions, but after reviewing the raw footage it seemed like a waste not to share it. In a past life I used to do digital audio and video production and I’ve still got some of the tools. I’ve cut the video down to eight minutes, played with the sequence to give it some narrative coherence and added a voice over. The camera is a nifty little device, but because it’s the size of a pack of playing cards there is a bit of camera shake. Sorry about that. Nonetheless, I hope you find it entertaining, and I hope Imagethief’s singular wit survives the transition to video.

    You can also see it at YouTube. Unfortunately I don’t have a version of this video posted on a Chinese video sharing site.