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Back to China, assisting Rob at Scene Photography again. This time we both gave our selves a week after the job to go explore some areas other than Shanghai. Robs plan was to go to a place called Thousand Island Lakes (A beautiful lake resort west of a city called Hangzhou) with his wife and two kids. I decided I would go on a lone mission to check out a couple of the local cities.

It was quite the adventure, exploring unopened super highways and getting to know more about the worlds factory..  Click below to see more

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This view of Shanghai was getting familiar.

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Police guiding traffic on a rainy day.

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Rush hour traffic leaving the city.

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Urban market. All the dead things hanging from the roof.

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The Shanghai Tower near completion.

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Leaving Shanghai on the pretty amazing high speed rail network. The industry infrastructure looming over the rural farm land.

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Approaching Hangzhou. More endless apartments.

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Industry everywhere.

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Nearly all the high speed rail is elevated on these huge viaducts. The scale of this infrastructure is incredible.

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More ozone destruction. Hooray for climate change

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Rural area of Ningbo. Lady washing vegetables in the river

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Back street meat deals

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Discovered a soon-to-be opened highway near my hotel in Ningbo. It was begging to be explored.. so I waited till dusk to avoid attention.. Ending up in a Chinese cell would suck

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Again this whole structure is elevated above the streets below.

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I decided to take a walk a long the highway.

Some of the views a long the way…

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Abandoned factories..

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And then came the bridge crossing.

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It felt like something out of a zombie apocalypse

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Workers hut. This section of the bridge was still under construction.. there was large holes in the road surface that I had to make sure I didn’t fall down!

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Everywhere you look, nothing but industry and housing… sigh

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I found it strange that they build these roads that lead to no where. There was no sign of them being completed any time soon, yet they have road markings and are lit with street lamps?! Why turn them off when you can build 6 more coal power stations to keep them on.

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Ominous unlit bridge structures

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Leaving a sign.

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Roads upon roads upon roads

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Happy with this one. The highway in the middle was still in use and had quite a bit of traffic running over it.. I didn’t think I would get a moment where it was empty… but waiting only a few mins I got a lucky break

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Leaving the overpass. This is how it looks from underneath.

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Small villages living and growing food here. Must be real healthy.

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Factory worker

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The air is thick, with the taste of chemicals in the back of your throat, your eyes start to sting. It’s a toxic waste land 🙁

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Stayed at a cool Airbnb in Hangzhou. This is an aerial PanoDrop near their apartment.

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Got a tour of a big toy factory. Here they are loading containers for export.

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Workers cutting the raw materials

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Cutting out jigsaws puzzles

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Stacks of completed puzzles

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Worker inserting the pull tabs

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Floors of workers.

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Spray painting components

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Conveyor belt with painted pieces ready to be stacked for drying

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Inspection booth

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As we flew out we had clear skies, as in you could actually see the sun through the smog for a change… but as you can see in this picture the pollution is still very much there, trapped by the different temperatures of air.

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Goodbye China

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Good Morning England

It was interesting to see other areas of China other than Shanghai, but I have to say it was depressing to see the amount of destruction we are causing to this planet. Endless apartment blocks and endless factories pumping out toxic waste into the environment. It is a global issue and I’m pretty sure we are incapable of stopping this mass consumption. We wont/ can’t stop until there’s nothing left to exploit :s

When I see those words which are on nearly everything you and I own, ‘MADE IN CHINA’ I can now begin to comprehend the real life impact that’s required to produce a product… Quite frankly its mind blowing.