A visitor walking around the remains of The Wonderland Theme Park, a construction project on the north-east outskirts of Beijing that was abandoned.

It was always an odd sight. For most, Beijing’s Wonderland was glimpsed from a car, or bus, en route to the Great Wall of China. A double-take was all that most remembered, wondering if they had actually just seen what appeared to be a half-finished Disneyland next to farmland on the outskirts of the city.

For those with time to spare after a day to the Great Wall, or just a sense of curiosity, the dilapidated foundations provided a pit-stop and chance to wander through a strange but intriguing failed building project.

It appears however that this unique place is no more. According to Shanghaiist, it seems that demolition began in late April. The park is making way for a supermarket apparently.

I stopped of at Beijing’s Wonderland last year, as part of an assignment. Here are a few images from a couple of hours wandering the ruins…

A man cycles past The Wonderland Theme Park.

Graffiti inside the Wonderland Theme Park.

Smashed windows in the Wonderland Theme Park.

The Great Wall of China at Laolongtou (plus ship)

I have visited the Great Wall of China nearly 20 times over my 6+ years in China. From hiking up its steep steps in the mountains north of Beijing to photographing the crumbling ruins in the country’s western desert regions, I have seen some beautiful sights.

This weekend however I saw perhaps the oddest scene I have witnessed in all my trips to the wall. A ship, run aground, having missed smashing into the wall by a matter of metres.

This scene is from the easternmost part of the Great Wall, at Laolongtou (Old Dragon’s Head) in Shanhaiguan, Hebei Provice, where the wall runs into the Bohai Sea. It’s obviously a very famous and well-visited part of the wall but it appears that someone took a wrong turn recently when trying to navigate this portion of coast in north-east China.

A unique Great Wall photo opportunity.

I wouldn’t of liked to have been the captain who realised that there was an imminent chance he was about to run into, and potentially destroy part of, perhaps the most iconic symbol of the whole nation.

According to local storeowners at the Lalongtou site, the ship ran aground in early November. As of yesterday, it hasn’t moved very far. Get there quick for a very unique Great Wall of China photo opportunity!

PetaPixel

North Korea news seems to have quietened down lately in the mainstream media but a couple of photo-related outlets recently picked up on my blog post ‘Inside North Korea: Photographing in the World’s Most Secretive Nation‘ which I re-posted here on the blog a couple of weeks ago. Click the link if you missed it when it was first posted.

Many thanks to PetaPixel and Feature Shoot for sharing the images and story with their followers. Please do check out their sites for an eclectic array of news and features from the photo-world.

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I just wanted to extend a big thank you to all of those who were able to make the opening of MELTDOWN at the weekend in Beijing. The opening was a great success and it was really encouraging to see so many people interested in this project.

A big thanks also to Southern Barbarian who were our hosts and put on a wonderful selection of drinks and delectible Yunnan-style food for us on the afternoon. The prints will be hanging for the next couple of months, so there is still plenty of time to see the show.

If you want to learn more about the project, please visit the Pulitzer Center site for slideshows and articles. There are a few more interesting developments with regards to this project coming soon, so please stay tuned for more news in the coming weeks!

MELTDOWN EXHIBITION OPENING

In case you missed the announcement last week, I’d like to extend another invitation to readers here on my blog to join me  in Beijing for the exhibition opening of ‘MELTDOWN: Climate Change and Environmental Degradation on the Tibetan Plateau’. I’m excited to have partnered with Southern Barbarian who will kindly be our hosts for the afternoon between 3-6 p.m., providing free drinks and Yunnan-style snacks for attendees.

This will be the first public exhibition of this work that was produced late last year with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. I hope this work will be of interest to those with a curiosity about life on the Tibetan Plateau and the effects of climate change on the people and ecosystems on the ‘roof of the world’.

For directions, maps and previews please visit any of the number of sites that have been promoting the event in the past couple of weeks – TIME OUT Beijing, SmartBeijing, City Weekend, eChinaCities,  and LumDimSum blog.

融逝无言: 青藏高原气候变化

Visitors stand next to ornate gates at the mausoleum for former North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. 2009

Tensions are running high again on the Korean peninsula. As international observers watch closely for what move the North will play next, I thought it might be a good time to revisit some of my work from photographing in North Korea, undercover on-assignment, for the Globe & Mail in 2009.

Below is an extract from an article I contributed to the Digital Journalist the same year, recounting some of my experiences whilst photographing in this reclusive state. It was an experience I shall never forget…

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Last month, I got a call from the Globe & Mail‘s Asia correspondent, Mark MacKinnon, asking me if I was free in early September for a shoot. “Sure,” I said. I had been working with Mark a lot recently and was keen to work with him again. “I’m thinking of going to North Korea,” he said. “North Korea? Okay, I’m in,” I nonchalantly replied.

As our bus trundled across the bridge over the Yalu River that separates China and North Korea, my initial nonchalance had well and truly disappeared as we slowly approached the most closed nation on earth.

A North Korean family huddle together in Kaesong City near the DMZ. 2009

I was nervous because both Mark and I were posing as tourists, entering a country that was not exactly friendly to the foreign press. Immediately after the well-publicized rescue by former U.S. President Bill Clinton of journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who had been caught illegally entering the country, this was maybe not the best time to be trying to sneak into North Korea. With Mark’s passport indicating his journalist credentials hidden (replaced by one with no such indications) and my camera broken up into as many parts as possible and spread around my person, we actually didn’t raise too many eyebrows as we quietly slipped onto a bus packed with Chinese tourists.

I didn’t know what to expect before I entered the country. I had done my research, reading articles and looking at previously taken images; however, there was so little information available that I decided to just be as open as possible to what I saw, found and felt while in the country.

For the whole time we were there, our tour guide and government minder, both assigned to watch over us, accompanied Mark and me. I was initially very cautious about taking photos and capturing video footage of this little-seen place. As soon as we crossed the border, I started to reassemble my camera and tried to look as much like an inquisitive tourist as possible.

Our first stop was Sinuiju city, just across the border from China, where we visited a statue of the “eternal leader,” Kim Il-Sung (this was to be the first of many). As I took my first few tentative shots of the statue, all appeared well. No one was watching me and no one was telling me to stop. The pedestrians walking nearby, beyond the pristine park in which the statue was located, quickly caught my attention. As I turned to photograph them, I managed to take a few frames before my minder appeared from nowhere and firmly cautioned me to “please, only photograph the statue.”

That afternoon we took the train from the border to the capital, Pyongyang. I again got into a little trouble when I photographed a train station attendant, a no-no apparently, and when I tried to photograph outside the window of our moving train. Both times, I was sternly but politely reminded that it was not me who dictated who or what could be photographed.

I began to become paranoid that they would find out what Mark and I were doing there. Rumors from guidebooks and fellow travelers hinted that our hotel rooms were almost certainly bugged, although there was no way to tell for sure.

As we traveled around the country, our minder and guide constantly quizzed us, both obviously “assigned” to find out a little more about who we were and why we were visiting, searching for any holes they could find in our stories. A slip could have gotten us into serious trouble.

A wedding party in Kaesong City, near the DMZ. 2009

One day, we visited the International Friendship Exhibition, a huge exhibition of gifts including armored cars, various decorative guns, a polar bear skin and a stuffed crocodile. The international community had given them all to Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il as presents.

As we approached the small cabinet that held gifts from Britain, our museum guide turned to me and pointed out a decorative plate with a picture of London’s Tower Bridge on the front. “What do you think of this plate?” she casually asked. “It’s … er … very nice. That bridge is very famous in our country,” I replied. “When was it built?” she said suddenly. Her change in tone and fixing of eyes with mine quickly turned this situation into an obvious spot quiz. I started to regret dropping history classes at the earliest possible opportunity at school. “About a hundred years ago?” I haphazardly guessed, obviously not knowing the answer. “You don’t know!” she scoffed. “How can you not know? You just said it was very famous in your country!” I had failed the test miserably and to top it all off I was told later that I “didn’t even look British.” I was becoming more and more paranoid by the second.

Later, however, I seemed to redeem myself after I casually mentioned I liked science. This provided another spot-quiz opportunity for our guide. “What’s a vacuum?” she randomly blurted out. “I beg you pardon?” I asked, thinking I had misheard. “What’s a vacuum?” she repeated, slightly more seriously. “It’s a an area of space, with no air or matter in it.” A disappointed “hmph” was the only reply I heard to that question. Suspicion (of what exactly is unknown, in this circumstance) was relieved temporarily.

A child sings on stage at the lavish ‘Children’s Palace’, in central Pyongyang. 2009

For the majority of our time in the country, Mark and I were separated from other travelers and even given our own 15-seater minivan that whisked us from site to site. After the first day or two, things started to change in our guides’ attitudes towards me photographing. Trying to pose as much like a tourist seemed to be paying off as they relaxed and rarely stopped me. I sat at the back of our minivan out of their vision and snapped away at the countryside that had been previously forbidden on the train. I seized upon their new attitude and boldly photographed away.

From our four days within the country, it was almost impossible to get close to the people to photograph. As much as I would have liked to, getting close to the everyday person proved to be almost impossible. Hence, my photographs from this journey have a sense of isolation about them. It is an isolation probably born from my own feelings while being there. People are dwarfed against the mighty, imposing communist-era architecture, small and insignificant against the overbearing size of the buildings.

For me, my images from this trip have raised more questions than answers. This isn’t a problem for me, but it does not help as much as I would like it to in offering answers in a photojournalistic sense. I hope that reading between the lines and peering through the cracks of these images, they will offer brief glimpses of life in this mysterious place and conjure clues for the viewer.

Traveling to North Korea was like stepping back in time to the Cold War. It’s a time that just doesn’t exist anywhere else on earth anymore. How long it will remain like this is truly an unknown.

—- Sean Gallagher, 2009

See more images from North Korea in this gallery featured on Burn Magazine 

MELTDOWN – Climate Change and Environmental Degradation on the Tibetan Plateau

Dear Friends, Followers and Readers,

I would like to invite you to the opening party for ‘MELTDOWN: Climate Change and Environmental Degradation on the Tibetan Plateau’, which will be taking place at Southern Barbarian in Beijing on Saturday 20th April from 3:00 until 6:00 p.m.

The exhibition will feature a selection of images from my travels last year documenting how climate change is affecting communities on the roof of the world.

MELTDOWN – Climate Change and Environmental Degradation on the Tibetan Plateau

On the afternoon, there will be free drinks and Yunnan-style snacks to sustain you as we enjoy a spring afternoon in the hutongs of central Beijing.

For more information and a map to the venue, please click here for City Weekend’s listing.

I look forward to seeing you there!

I just arrived in the Indonesian capital for an assignment and will be here for the next week and a half, exploring the city and photographing issues related to the city’s development and environmental issue.

Follow my mobile updates on Instagram (sean_gallagher_photo) in my ‘Jakartan Diary’ as I explore what I am sure will turn out to be a fascinating city.

Burn

The deadline is May 5, 2013 this year and with a total fund of US$ 15,000 for the chosen photographers. Its a serious amount of money that could make some new projects become a reality.

As readers of this blog may know, I was lucky enough to receive the for EPF in 2008. It made a significant impact on my early career and continues to do so today. It freed me up to pursue the projects that I really wanted to and gave me the confidence to follow my passion of covering environmental issues.

If you’d like to learn more about my application and the grant’s impact on me and my career, I wrote this blog post about it in 2011.

Good luck to all those who enter!

A stream is clogged with rubbish in a small Tibetan town on the Tibetan Plateau. Qinghai Province. 2012

Water pollution has been in the news a lot recently in China. The most notable story that has been circulating of late was the discovery of over 13,000 dead pigs in the Huangpu River outside of Shanghai. It’s another in a long line of stories that highlight the challenges that China faces in managing its waterways as the nation continues its rush to develop.

Reading the coverage of this story led me to think about some of the examples of water pollution I have witnessed in my 6 1/2 years criss-crossing China, documenting some of the country’s most pressing environmental crises. Polluted waterways have not been a rare sight on my travels.

So, here I present a selection of what I believe are some of the most severe examples of water pollution I have witnessed. From the Tibetan Plateau to China’s coastal cities, no region is exempt from the scourge of water pollution.

Explore the links between the images to learn more about the facts behind the water pollution crisis in China.

A man covers his face whilst passing refuse that has gathered on the surface of Dongting Lake, in Hunan Province. 2010

“In China, 320 million people are without access to clean drinking water and 190 million people are drinking water severely contaminated with hazardous chemicals.” – Greenpeace

A figure stands on the edge of a stagnant pool of water in a Tibetan relocation town in Qinghai Province, 2012.

“Underground water in 57 percent of monitoring sites across Chinese cities have been found polluted or extremely polluted.” - Economic Information Daily/Xinhua quoting Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection

A young child walks past a pool of stagnant water in a relocation town on the Tibetan Plateau. Qinghai Province. 2012.

“Half of China’s population (nearly 700 million people) consumes drinking water contaminated with animal and human waste” – World Resources Institute

A piece of styrofoam washed into a mangrove forest in Guangdong Province. 2010

A dead fish lies on the shore of mangrove ecosystem in Guangdong Province. 2010

“There is hardly a stream in China that doesn’t have somebody putting [something] into it or taking water out of it…Everything is messed up with pollution, pipes taking off water for agriculture, for industry, for household use [and] building weirs across rivers to divert the water into little gullies.” – John MacKinnon – EU-China Biodiversity Programme – Interview, March 2011.

A polluted waterway in the town of Sershul in Sichuan Province. 2012

A pig walks past a pile of refuse that has gathered near a stream on the Tibetan Plateau. 2012

Infographic: Map of Pollution Levels in China’s Major River Basins – Circle of Blue

A man pours waste water into a stream in the town of Sershul, Sichuan Province. 2012

A man swims in the polluted waters of Dongting Lake in Hunan Province. 2010

In China, Water You Wouldn’t Dare Swim in, Let Alone Drink - TIME Magazine

A pool of water is stained a red/orange colour from pollution on the Tibetan Plateau. 2012

Chickens walk across flood water that has encroached upon industrial land during a flood in Hunan Province. 2010.

Water pollution in Asia: The urgent need for prevention and monitoring - Global Water Forum

Yak carcasses are left discarded in and next to a waterway on the grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau. 2012

Hight tide in Guangdong Province brings with it trash and refuse which gathers together with small branches in a mangrove ecosystem. 2010

“Nearly 10 million of China’s 120 million hectares (25 million of 295 million acres) of cultivated land have been polluted.” - Circle of Blue

Severe eutrophication in a lake in Hangzhou. Excess nutrients in the water from pollution fuel algae growth which in turn reduces oxygen levels in the water killing life beneath. 2010

Discarded cigarette butts in a pond on the outskirts of Beijing. 2012

Cost of Pollution in China: Economic Estimates of Physical Damage – World Bank

A dead fish lies on the beach in the coastal city of Zhanjiang, in southern China. 2012

A frog swims next to a discarded plastic bottle in a pond in the town of Sershul, Sichuan Province. 2012

Refuse gathers on the surface of a pond in the worn of Sershul, in Sichuan Province. 2012

A Tibetan boy stands near to a waterway that has been completely clogged by refuse in a town on the Tibetan Plateau. 2012