Hannibal Buress summed up the arbitrage of love in his Netflix comedy special Comedy Comisado:
A dollar bill isn’t worth that much in England but it’s worth a lot in Mexico. We all mean different things to different people, is what I’m trying to say. Finding true love is about finding your Mexico, where you go somewhere and you say, “I get how many tacos for three dollars? Holy shit! I want to stay here forever!” And you just hope that feeling is mutual. And that’s love.
I was excited about this one, too. One of the farthest flung of all the Shanghai Metro lines: Line 16. (Why there is no Line 14 or Line 15 is a mystery that I have not been able to solve. A conspiracy at the highest levels of Shanghai government, no doubt. Wake up, sheeple. The truth is out there.)
This line ends in a huge, perfectly circular, man-made lake.
It was windy as fuck. At least this little girl with a streamer was having more luck than the wind-battered kite flyers.
It seems like there should be a lot to do around Dishui Lake. It’s resort area, apparently. But I was just done for the day. Just done. So I got right back on the Metro and headed home.
Previous terminus adventures can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
I thought this one was going to be exciting. This new, eastern extension of Line 11 is supposed to go all the way to the (long delayed and as of yet still under construction) Disneyland. But since Disneyland isn’t open yet, the train stops one station short.
Not much to see. This is the track, curving Disneyward.
Previous terminus adventures can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Spent a day on terminus adventures in Pudong. First up was the southern end of Line 8.
Okay, wooded area with bridges, smokestacks, and cooling towers in the distance. Yeah. I got right back on the train and left.
Previous terminus adventures can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
That’s snow covering glass canopy over the mall next to work. Sometimes it snows in Shanghai.
We had a Hollywood-style wrap party for Kung Fu Panda 3.
The view of Pudong out the window of the venue was killer. Looks like something out of a William Gibson novel.
Robyn & I also had the chance to visit Shanghai’s gargantuan science museum.
Here’s an exhibit on cloned goats that caught our attention.
We were disappointed that the bat cave was an exhibit on bats.
My friend Robyn was in town a few weeks back and I (finally) visited the Yu Yuan Garden. (But since “yuan” means “garden” we’re sort of in a “the the tar pits tar pits” situation.)
Amazing how all these structures grew out of Superman throwing a crystal in the snow.
I’ve eaten some strange things in China — a chicken head, grilled scorpion, grilled cicadas, cubes of coagulated pigs’ blood — but this might be the most Chinese:
Fried silkworm chrysalises.
I got cocky today. Instead of wearing thermal underwear, jeans, wool socks, hiking boots, undershirt, sweater, winter jacket, scarf, and gloves like I did on my first night, I foolheartedly decided to visit St. Sofia Cathedral and Zhongyang Rd. wearing only jeans, sweater, jacket, and scarf.
Did you know there is a thing called “frostnip” that happens before frostbite? Yeah, I learned about that today. Despite the fact that, as Wikipedia tells me, Harbin is only a few minutes of latitude north of Portland, Oregon.
But then I doubled down on my hubris and decided to have a “wintery hotpot” dinner at the ice palace behind my hotel wearing only jeans and two sweaters.
The food was delicious, but I shivered through the entire hour & a half ordeal. It might look cozy from inside, but this is what it looks like from outside…
And this is the interior of the adjacent ice bar…
To be fair, they did warn me my tauntaun would freeze before the first marker.
Zhangyang Street is another major focus of the Harbin Ice Festival.
I tried to get a terrier to pose next to this ice sculpture of a gramophone, but he was having none of it.
This one is a reminder of the cruel effect temperature has on acoustic guitars.
I saw a couple walk by this one. The guy looked confused. His girlfriend said “爱” (love) without breaking stride and jest kept walking.
Reindeer-drawn sleigh.
In anticipation of the upcoming Chinese Year of the Monkey, this ice sculpture allows you to imagine punching your fist through two monkey’s faces!
Ice blocks carved by Gummi artisans who work exclusively in the medium of Gummi.
I love the detritus of ice carvers: snow & shards of ice.
An artisan and his tool…
I feel like a giant snowflake carved out of ice is sort of belaboring the point, but I guess I’ll let this slide.
Zhongyang St. debouched on the Songhua River at sunset with people frolicking on the frozen ice. A fitting end to a beautiful (if frigid) day.
But then I ran across this Vegas-worthy castle hotel with a gondola lift in its belly. (Yes, the hotel has a twin on the other side of the river.)
Further up the river on my walk back to my hotel, I was impressed by the juxtaposition of classical art (a bronze statue of a man defeating a dragon) with ice art (a rainbow-colored archway.)
Remember our discussion about Angela Lansbury? Well, here’s St. Sofia’s Cathedral in Harbin. Clearly heavily indebted to Russian architecture.
Not sure how to say “tuppence” in Russian…
Tiny, but majestic. (Feel free to use your favorite dick joke here.) 
Apologies for the Michael Mann color balance on the fluorescent lights illuminating the painting of the last supper.
Speaking of Russians and color temperature, back in film school at USC there was this T.A. we had in one of our early Production classes named Dimitri who spoke with an almost cartoonish Russian accent. He once exhorted us, “If you shoot sunlight color-balanced film without an 85C filter, everything you shoot will look like a Tony Scott love scene.”Poet and axiomatic. He was so right.
Anyway, back to Eastern Orthodox aesthetics…
Surfacers at DreamWorks labor for hours to create textures with as much verisimilitude as these old walls.
