2017 was a slower year, as we spent the first half of it in Jiamusi, Heilongjiang, a place with fuck all to see or do. After we moved back to Guilin things started to pick up again and I got some decent shots, the most coveted being a photo of a wild rhesus monkey. Still, I was too busy with studying swordsmanship from my Master to go on many epic trips this past year, so I hope that I still have a chance after I finish my studies in several months, before we leave China for good (at least living here).
These first several shots were still from the tail end 2016 - I failed to add them last year. As you can see, it was cold as fuck. The winter lasted over seven months and continued training in temperatures as low as -30 C..
It was so cold that I couldn't take off my gloves to take a photo for more than a minute, but it was worth the effort.
It wasn't until June that things started turning green again outside!
After we finally escaped from Chinese Siberia the first thing I did was buy a motorbike and get back out there! And we made it just in time, as right after our epic trip the weather was uncooperative for over a month of the latter half of the summer...
The road to our usual swimming hole had been washed away during a massive flood shortly after we arrived and the pool under this waterfall became the replacement. Not too shabby, either..
A portion of the autumn ended up being quite nice and besides these photos I was able to get a lot of footage for my final China video on swordsmanship. This will be the biggest one yet, with lots of scenery and fencing. Look for it in two or three months!
Anyways, I don't know when we are leaving China yet - probably in March or April - so this may be the end of this photo series - if the weather stays shitty, as it tends to do in winter here... I wish that I could say that I explored the country to my heart's content, but the fact is that I made a lot of sacrifices to get to where I ended up in my martial arts studies. Still, I travelled over 80.000km (not including my daily commutes), through some of the most remote and untouched areas of South China and had a lot of amazing experiences during my time here. I was only able to capture a small portion of what I saw, but I hope that you've enjoyed the ride.