The Zig

Backpacking China Pt 4 (The Final Part)

// October 25th, 2008 // Comments // Articles/Features, Travel

The final installment. Thanks for reading.

For this to make any sense, you’ll first need to read:

- Part 1

- Part 2

- Part 3

Let’s begin Part 4…

This queue was moving, very slowly. One row of vehicles every twenty/thirty minutes. And we were the very back of it and I knew how long it was to the front as we’d driven from it. It was going to take hours, and indeed it did. After a good four or five hours, with no movement in the final two, signs were suggesting that the bridge was closed again. But John Wayne was not to be defeated; the ‘let’s turn around and re-queue for the bridge we spent all day queuing for’ plan had not turned out to be the master-stroke he had hoped for. But his bow had many strings, which would of course make it no longer a bow but something closer resembling a harp. But that’s not relevant to the story. He had a cunning plan….

Getting the cars in front of us to bunch up a bit, freeing up a space directly in front of us, he sent his team out to start moving traffic. This was the plan:

Traffic was stuck in three lanes, with us in the center lane. Using the space in front of us, he could get the vehicle on our right to pass up and take that space, freeing up a space behind them in the right hand lane for the vehicle behind us to join. We could then reverse into that space freeing up space in front of us for the car that just joined the right-hand lane, to now join the center lane. After some initial reluctance people started moving. Slowly at first, incase this new lane could be even worse than their other stationery one. Slowly, slowly, center lane to right lane, reverse, right lane to center lane and repeat, it started to work like a charm, it was pure poetry to see the speed with which we were making our way out to the back of the queue and closer to ending the ‘queuing for the bridge groundhog day’. I felt elated, ecstatic even.

The final car moved from behind us, to beside us, to in front of us and we were clear, out of the back of the queue of cars that’d joined since we joined the queue hours before. We were just about to turn the bus around (inface we were at a 45′ angle, when I spotted flashing lights in the back window of the bus. That can’t be good right? Right. It was the police. They disapproved of the master plan. We would not be allowed to turn around and drive the wrong way up this road (there was a central reservation not allowing us to move to the other side of the road). Instead we were told to get back in the queue and wait like everyone else, which we promptly did. Only now we the very last vehicle at the back of the queue and we’d just lost 4 hours for nothing. It was starting to feel like something or someone was against us. I’d lost the will to live. Annett had been muttering and swearing in German for hours. I couldn’t pick up most of the vile words being used but I knew if translated and told to the Chinese government they would result in us being lynched, and our vital organs hastily sold on the black market. Thirty Eight hours had passed.

We queued again (spotting a pattern here?!). It took another few hours of the waiting game before we slowly reached our original spot in the queue, then we edged forward of that point, to near the front of the queue, then very near the front of the queue, then jesus christ we’re the front of the queue and oh my god, could it be? Oh yes it is, we’re back on the bridge again! We sped back to where we’d spent the previous night, meaning in a total period of twelve hours we’d moved a distance of……0.00kms or minus one bridge depending on how you want to look at it. Impressive work. The bus cheered as we crossed the bridge the second time. Getting off, we all braced ourselves for more congestion but having already proved that our patience was longer than anyone else’s, everyone else had given up and for the next few hours we were able to drive unhindered, breaking 20kms/hr on several occasions, an almost dizzying speed. My fears of now suffering from motion sickness after so much time stationary proved unfounded. It was such a relief to be moving, I wouldn’t have cared if they’d be driving us right back to Tangkou, as long as we were moving it had to be positive, right? We broke out the last of our food (the Pringles) in celebration. How we weren’t ravenous I don’t know.

Forty one hours had passed before we saw the first sign for Wuhan. The end was not exactly in sight, but bar us running into another bridge, it was within today’s driving distance. You noticed the relief on the bus, a collective exhale of stress we’d been carrying, people began to fidget again, re-discovering some nervous energy as the end of our captivity approached. Watching the drivers crew pay the toll for us to enter Wuhan felt like hostage release negotiations, I would guess our release fee was less than $1, very reasonable for 45 hostages. But the adventure was not quite over yet. We crossed into Wuhan, which was as huge and similar looking as the other Chinese cities we’d been to. First we were driven to the buses office, where they had to change some tyres. Why this couldn’t wait until they’d dropped us off I don’t know and they couldn’t explain when I asked. Once complete we were ready to head to our drop-off point (well presumably) when a small puppy ran under the bus to hide from its owner. Owner being a loose definition in China for the person who has overall responsible for the dog, even if that responsibility is just to feed it up until its ready to be stewed. Perhaps the dog sensing his fate, sort solace under the bus. John Wayne and crew leapt to the task instantly creating another gem of a plan. Running to assist the owner the team grabbed poles to thrust under the bus at the dog. This, while sending the dog crazy, barking and yelping, but didn’t re-enforce in him the idea that all was well and he should probably come out of hiding. Who would have known huh? Fumbling for the missing piece of the masterplan they brought out an empty potato sack and took turns to drive the dog down to one corner where a member of the crew would set out the bag, hoping the dog would run into it. Anyone that’s owned a dog would have known that when cornered its unlikely to run into a giant carrier bag wielded by an angry looking Chinese man with a pole. This charade lasted a good 45 minutes, and had I still any energy left I’d of gone down to encourage them to just leave the dog alone until, sensing that the danger was gone would have come out of its own accord. Luckily a girl arrived, told all the men to go away then said the mandarin equivalent of
“Here boy, here boy, ah cute like doggy, aren’t you a good boy, ah you’re a cutey.”
The dog ran straight out, she grabbed him and the owner came and carried him away. Well, carried is perhaps generous to say carried, what he actually did was lift him up by pinching him in the back of the head using just two fingers and swinging him left and right in the air, back across the road to the restaurant. Forty-three hours and thirty minutes had passed.

The bus then drove us to the central bus station. Immediately the bus was swamped left and right by people trying to sell us things. Although we were at the bus stop, we couldn’t accept that it was really over. Something else must go wrong, surely? But the door opened and people began leaving. The crew all stood at the front of the bus and said goodbye shaking hands with everyone and joking about the ordeal. Gingerly we got up, collected our things and when it was our turn to say goodbye I felt that strong bond had developed between us all. When shaking Johns hand he gave me this look, which said (at least how I interpreted it) ‘Retarded western man with pea-size bladdered girlfriend. You’re alright, you know. You’re alright.’

It was a scene reminiscent of saying goodbye to your eldest son on his first day at university. Go on now son you’re free. I’ve taught you all the life skills you need, there’s nothing more you can learn from me now. You can sleep in a size the space of a matchbox, live on half a pastry a day, pee anywhere and not make a fuss. Barely even a peep. Good on ya’. Go live the simple life.

“I will, and thanks” my eyes said. I nearly cried.

My brain on the other hand said “yeah fucking right you retard, the only time you’d get me on a bus again is if I could drive it at great speed over your head. Got anymore great plans to get us out of the bus station John? Perhaps you’d recommend we avoid the busy footpaths by digging a tunnel out instead, using just our toothbrushes?”.

We ran to the nearest five star hotel we could find, ordered room service of sweets, cakes, cookies and spent the rest of the day watching sleeping, eating, repeatedly showering and waiting for the news of our release to break on CNN.

Backpacking China Pt 3

// October 23rd, 2008 // Comments // Articles/Features, Travel

Before you get started, you’ll probably want to read

- Part 1

- Part 2

Eventually we stopped again, as it began dusking on day two. We joined a queue. Well at least I think it was a queue. Does a queue have to move, to technically be a queue? If so it wasn’t a queue, but a collection of equally stuck people, huddling together in motor vehicles, perhaps for warmth. I had no idea what we were queuing for, and an attempt to get information from John Wayne’s crew had just resulted in bemused looks, and lots of laughter. So resigned to having no idea what was happening and absolutely no power to change it we settled in for another night in the queue. This time there seemed to be a realization that we weren’t going anywhere soon, so we could get on and off the bus for toilet breaks as we pleased. Alongside the bus was a sheer drop to the left and the right, leaving no choice but to just pee on the road, next to the bus, or someone else’s bus, or truck, or car. The choice was yours, I switched each time, just to keep it fresh (the variation not the road). Annett could now pee in the open public, so that part was no problem and she had acquired what would no doubt be a valuable transferable skill, even if it probably wouldn’t make it onto her CV.
As the hours drifted by, and the evening became the night I think I drifted in and out of sanity. I’m guessing it was the potent cocktail of frustration, hunger, futility, cramp, tiredness and cold that caused it. I started wondering if maybe we’d been kidnapped. No-one on the bus appeared in the slightest bit concerned that we got on the bus one day and instead of getting off it the next day were we just going to disappear for another day at least. No-one called their wife, husband, family, work. No-one had a phone; the girl at the back got off just a few hours after getting on, perhaps tipped off by the dentists, sneaky dentists. Surely our fellow captives must have been worried about us? If so, why did they not look more worried? Maybe we’d been kidnapped? I thought maybe there were news reports announcing our kidnapping being shown on the BBC, threats of executions if John Wayne didn’t receive a large PayPal payment or some distant comrades weren’t released from a prison in Cuba. They weren’t able to politely inform us that we’d been kidnapped as no-one spoke English, so they’d just put us on the bus and driven us to the middle of nowhere, where our resolve and fight would be destroyed through humiliating bouts of sleep deprivation, involuntary hunger strike and public urination torture.

I also thought about what would happen if this had occurred in the UK. We were now twenty-six hours into this trip, in the middle of our second night and there was no bus mutiny, not even a hint of dissent. No complaints, no challenges to the driving crews’ authority. Everyone just sat there, barely saying a word to each other. In the UK if the bus had stopped moving without explanation I guess it would have been about four minutes before someone went to the front to ask:

(Four minute delay) “What’s going on, driver?”

“The bridge is closed. Because of the bad weather” the driver would say.

The message would ripple back through the bus amid a chorus of ‘oh no, you must be joking, you’re ‘avin a laugh’

A few minutes would pass, someone else would approach the driver…

(Fifteen minute delay) “Driver, this simply will not do. Eastenders will be on in 60 minutes and I must get home to see whose turn it is to kill their husband and bury him under the stairs.”

(Twenty five minute delay) Mobile phones would be produced, friends would be called “You’re not going to believe this! They’ve closed the bridge.”

“No way?” They would exclaim.

“Yeah I know, utterly ridiculous isn’t it, unbelievable, I mean what do we pay taxes for?! The government can’t even keep a simple bridge in operation.”

(Thirty minute delay) Someone would approach the driver with a plan. “I called a friend of mine and he suggested that if we just turn around, take a left, left, second right, straight over at the lights, take a right passed the fish and chip shop we can join the A421 passed cragglyhead-upon-tyne which will take us around this bridge and we’ll be home in time for tea and biscuits.”

“Erm, no, I know that road and its usually congested, and it’s a long de-tour” the driver would reply. “I’m sure if we just stay put we can wait this out, it will probably re-open again in a few minutes.”

“A few minutes?! Do you think I have a few minutes to spare? Do you have any idea how important I am?! I work in the city you know, yes that’s right the city! I don’t have time to spend idling here in this elongated coffin on the road to nowhere with riff raff like you.”

“Which city?” the driver says, puzzled

“The city! Asshole!” he would reply, bluntly, as if there were more than one.

(Forty minute delay) The Sun is called, prepares a front page exposes “Broken Britain is BUST – Public transport meltdown!!”

(Forty-five minute delay) “Sorry driver, but the passengers and I have taken a vote and found you to be incompetent and no longer fit for service. Hunger levels have reached a dangerous new high, fast approaching what could only be described as ‘peckish’.” So we will now kill and eat you. Sorry about that, no hard feelings though old chap there really is no other choice. Rule Britannia.”

(One hour delay) Driver is eaten. People give up, get off and walk home.

(One and a half hour delay) Everyone arrives home, begins writing the memoirs of their hardship for serialization in weekly women’s magazines alongside Britney’s latest yawn.

Meanwhile another night passes, and the bus hasn’t move an inch…..

The next morning and its now thirty four hours since we left Tangkou. We’re still in the queue, which still hasn’t moved. We’ve given up all hope of every getting off the bus. Forget our pasts Annett, we were different people then. Now we’re bus people. We can make it work, we’ll just live here in our bunks forever. My body will slowly adapt and shrink in upon itself, collapsing vertebrae until I can lay flat instead of concertinaed like an English Monkey Accordion. We can decorate my window with hand-drawn dust imagery, there’ll be all the spit you can drink courtesy of our Chinese bus friends, I’ll take a job, anything to pass the time maybe become a full-time yawner or head scratcher both valued occupations, you can be a bus wife and stay at home in the day keeping the coops clean. We won’t have much, but we’ll make it work.

Okay, at this point something had clearly snapped and it was more than delusion, I’d gone full blown crazy. Luckily at roughly the same time something snapped in John Wayne as well, and he manoeuvred the bus onto the equivalent of the hard shoulder. There we started slowly moving past the waiting traffic. I have no idea why now we were allowed to use this lane before, I was just relieved to see us moving again. We passed waiting buses and cars, although there were plenty of spaces where vehicles had just given up, turned round and left presumably also by the hard shoulder. Anyway, there was no time for analysis, we were free and moving. It was time for breakfast, the other half of the croissant. Then after a brief period of empty road, we turned a corner to see………………..another queue.

Different, yet still very familiar. We’d been here before. Ah yeah, awesome, another freakin’ queue. I’d of swapped my first born child for a KitKat by this point. For the first time we contemplated abandoning the bus and just following blindly some of the people walking past to try and find a town where we could wait out the bad weather. But we had no idea where that town might be, and knew for a fact that if we did find this town we would be unable to communicate with anyone and would be just ignored. We got off the bus and began walking around a bit trying to decide whether to take our chances. A girl who’d been walking along the road begged to join our bus, literally begged. At first they said no, but then took pity upon her. This didn’t exactly fill us with the confidence we need to abandon the bus and its warm blankets. Amazingly the next time we passed her on the way to the toilet she informed us that she spoke a little English and she could help us if we wanted. We wanted. Did she perhaps have a magic carpet we could borrow? No. Ah, shame. Instead she translated for us while we spoke to John and his crew. He confirmed that the bridge was closed, no idea when it would open, we were a little over half through the journey, there was a town a few kms back where everyone is also stuck, no taxis, no hotel, best to stay put.

Then something quite unexpected happened, the queue started moving. The crew scrambled to put the snow chains back on the tyres and we edged closer to the bridge, inch by inch by inch closer to our destination. Within thirty minutes we were crossing the bridge, wheels spinning, very gingerly as we moved slowly across trying not to slip down the ravine that already housed one overturned bus. Our progress was good and a mere 5 minutes later we reached the other end of the bridge and saw the queue of vehicles waiting to cross in the opposite direct. Poor buggers, I muttered as we passed lines and lines of waiting cars, trucks and buses. I know how you feel. Hold on in there, just another hour or two. Then inexplicably with the taste of freedom on our tongues, the bus stopped, turned around and joined the back of the queue to cross the bridge we’d just spent the last day queuing to cross?!?! WTF? Was this some sort of joke? Did we love the bridge that much that we needed to ride it again? Missing our queue friends back on the other side? Had Sandra Bullock boarded the bus to inform us of a reverse Speed situation, drive over 5kms/hr and a bomb will go off?

Onwards to Part 4

Backpacking China pt 2

// October 21st, 2008 // Comments // Articles/Features

Read pt.1 here

I must have drifted off for a few minutes, that felt like a few hours, you know those sleeps, the ones in uncomfortable places like planes where you wake up and feel immensely proud of yourself:

Did I?…hum…dribble at edge of mouth….slight headache….yep, I fell asleep!

Awesome…finally…phew, we must be nearly there now, great.

Until you realise only 7 minutes have past, and seven thousand still remain. What woke me was the sound of the buses reversing noise – ‘beep, beep, beep, beep’ which roused me, cranky and hoping to be greeting by

a)a red carpet
b)Wuhan
c)A comfy bed

Instead I got to see us reversing from a bridge, whose entry barriers were down with flashing orange lights that didn’t exactly scream welcome. After turning round, the bus just sat there. 10minutes, 20 Minutes, 30 minutes passed as it looked out away from the bridge, scanning the scenery for a plan of what to do next. I’d have like to think that John Wayne called an emergency bus crew meeting:

Team, we have a situation here. The bridge is closed and we have two westerners on the bus tonight. One is from England, you know that little hobbit place where they have picnics in castles, and play bridge and eat scones with the Queen. England is the size of a large slice of toast and I’m concerned he may die of travelling fatigue as the longest journey he is likely to have done before is 12mins. We need a plan……Whiteboards would appear, maps would be consulted, friends called until ‘operation minimize westerner discomfort’ whisked us to our destination.

I suspect the real situation was closer to:

Team, we have a situation here. We’re running very low on whisky. The bridge is closed and I have absolutely no clue where the fuck we are, and therefore where we can buy more whisky. It’s also freezing cold. Now we have two westerners on the bus, so we could kill them and use their pretty white skins as extra blankets. The male is particularly hairy, and his thick monkey hair he would make a fine duvet. “Boss?” “Yes Chen.” “I don’t really like my wife; can we just stay here for the foreseeable future?” “Yes, good idea Chen let’s just stay here……”

And so we stayed there.

I have no idea for how long, but eventually day broke and revealed the harshness of the landscape surrounding us. Popular consensus tells us that China is over-populated. Popular consensus is spectacularly wrong. Sure the cities are bursting at the seams, but the countryside?! Vast chunks of China are as barren as the moon. It would not have been a surprise to me had a NASA space probe landed to perform tests on this foreign planet, looking for water or sub-prime mortgage opportunities. Come to think of it, it’s possible they were sitting on the other side of bridge. If they weren’t and are planning a visit, skip it guys, this place is uninhabitable. Nothing lives here. Not anything, it just a spectacular wasteland.

Eventually, as the morning became mid-morning we set off in the opposite direction driving at break-neck speeds on icy empty roads. It continued to snow, relentlessly. It was now 3 weeks since we’d seen the sun, or experienced heating and looking at my watch it was just about to be become the time we should have arrived in Wuhan, and having no idea where Wuhan was, or where we were now, I had no idea how much distance we had covered. Nothing much happened for the next few hours until a toilet break. Perhaps toilet is an grandiose way of describing a wooden shack. The men’s was a big trough, about 8 foot wide and 4 foot long. All the men crowded the edge and peed into the centre, like one of those dancing water fountains you might find in Disneyland, only yellow. The shack had no door. Had it not been freezing the smell would have been at least putrid, for that I have no doubt. But being a man, I suspected peeing simultaneously with 10 men in an open toilet sewer with no door was probably Christmas Morning compared with what was in-store for Annett on the other side of the wall. There they had a narrower open pit, only this time only wide enough for 4 women to squat across, and so she waited amongst a queue of watching women seeing a row of four shitting/peeing whilst simultaneously spitting clucking chicken women. After she’d overcoming her phobia of public urination we washed our hands in snow, with a feeling I’d imagine is something similar to what Andy Dufresne might have felt after climbing out of the Sewers of Shawshank. It didn’t last long…

Back on the bus, deflated and exhausted I pulled the blanket up to my face and turned to Annett and we held hands across the aisle. We didn’t say much, there wasn’t much to say. You’re miserable, I’m miserable. I hate this country, you hate this country. But we’re here, stuck, but we’re stuck together. Fuck the no public affection rule, let’s hold hands for a while and pretend we’re back in Germany riding bicycles on a blissful summer’s day on our way to buy a bottle of Beck and a €1 kebab.

Sixteen hours had now passed.

Before we got on the bus we’d just finished having dinner at Simon’s place, the Chinese friend/guide that we’d met in Tangkou. We were the only westerners in the whole town, so he’d opened just for us, made our favourite meal and arranged our bus tickets. As he walked with us to the bus stop we debated whether we needed food for the journey. As it was relatively short (12hrs is not that long by Chinese travel standards) we decided that we probably didn’t. But then for a reason that escapes my memory we did make a last minute diversion to purchase a couple of croissants, a pack of Pringles and a bottle of water. So it was surprising that after eighteen hours of not eating we weren’t starving. It was as if my body having assessed that the chances of corner shop anywhere round here, perhaps behind one of those big rocks in the distance, were actually pretty small. So it didn’t bother me with requests for food, because that would be futile. Futile and frustrating. I rewarded it with half a croissant and a few sips of water.

Twenty hours had now passed.

Onwards to Part 3

Backpacking China pt 1

// October 20th, 2008 // Comments // Articles/Features

Continuing my 30 posts in 30 days challenge (I’m a few behind, but not totally failing) here is an expanded account of our recent backpacking trip in SE Asia. This past finds us on a night bus, during Chinese New Year and the worst weather in 50 years. It’s quite long, so I’ll break it up into a few parts….

We used to have this expression at Uni “failing to prepare, is preparing to fail” we used it so often it became beyond old. Still we would wheel it out for one last go when someone accidentally sat the wrong exam, or was stood next to the printer at 8:58am, two minutes before the deadline….Dude “failing to prepare, is preparing to fail” we’d say, enjoying that this time we weren’t the recipient of this pearl of belated wisdom.

The whole of our month backpacking in China we were that student stood nervously at the printer, failing in preparation. It’s always hot in china right? Yeah, I guess so. I’ve never heard anyone mention that it is cold. Ah, okay then, I’ll throw a hoodie in just in case though, it is January after all. So you can imagine our bemused surprise when after arriving in shorts and t-shirt, expecting to have just escaped a bitter European winter we instead plunged into an even colder Chinese one. Not just any winter, the worst weather in 50 years. We didn’t see the sun for 3.5 weeks of solid snow, in which it didn’t once get over 0°C. Did I also mention that Southern China has no heating? Architecturally, it’s designed to keep cool with very few doors or windows to spread the cool air in stifling summers, which you can imagine has the opposite effect in winter. Lucky we had one hoodie between us.

As if that wasn’t enough to challenge us, we also picked the month of the Chinese New Year. In our naivety we were excited about this. Assuming it would involve being invited to a BBQ, maybe a few drinks a little dance with a dragon or two under a shower of fireworks. The reality was a little less celebratory, instead we joined in on the largest human migration on earth, with an estimated 180million people, or three times the entire population of the UK moving across China to return (usually to the countryside) to their hometowns to celebrate with family. Worst weather in 50 years, a transport system at breaking point with 180 million people on the move, no make that 180,000,002 with two stupid backpackers (we did stumble upon a few dozen month over the month, but not much more) making our own haphazard pilgrimage from Shanghai to Beijing via Xi’an.

We actually managed to avoid the travel chaos fairly well, turning up a day after the train station riots that killed 5 people in Xi’an where 100,000 people stormed police and ran for the trains. When we were there the heaving masses where far less intimidating, a mere 30,000 people fighting over 10 trains, at the most. But there was one leg of our journey where we won the inconvenience lottery, and that was the nightbus journey from Tangkou to Wuhan.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be a chicken in a chicken coop, you should ride a Chinese night-bus. A mere 20 euros will secure you a prime coop for 14 hours of fun. None of the freedom of free range here though, sonny.
It’s essentially a normal sized bus, split into three rows. Each row has 7 sets of top and bottom bunk beds with metal frames. Your legs go under the head of the person in front and the back of the bed archs upwards to create a pocket of space for the person behinds legs and feet to fit. Like human Meccano. In total about 45 of us are on the bus. The aisles are so narrow that I have trouble walking down them and I’m almost so thin I’m 2d. Fat people are not welcome on the night-bus, not that China seems to have any. I’m lying under a green standard issue night-bus duvet. The duvet smells of death, Chinese death (cigarettes and fatty food). When I say lying (lying flat), I am in fact lying (the world is flat). In England I’m only noticeably tall, because I’m even more noticeably thin; the two combined emphasising each other, which makes people want to buy me a warm meal. But in China I’m 2 inches or so below put in a cage and poke with sticks height. My height has caused no real problems in China until now. Climbing into the bunk I feel like that little folding guy in Oceans 11. Perhaps George Clooney will wake me up during the trip to take part in a heist at the mirage. The bunk’s not designed for anyone over the dizzy heights of 5ft 10. So lying with my legs straight is impossible. I got cramp just looking at the bunk. Climbing in well…let me see if I can just…that’s it…a little more….legs back tiny bit…..wrap them round my head….hip bones connected to my thigh bone…do the hokey kokey….success! Only the third least comfortable I’ve ever been in my whole life. To my right is a window (I’m in the right hand-row). I’m pretty sure it’s there for the amusement of people looking into to the bus at the passing freak show, than for ours looking out.

I don’t think we’re the most popular people on the bus. Perhaps because Annett has a psychological disorder that requires her to need the toilet two minutes after we waved goodbye to the last one. A clue should have been when I heard her practicing the mandarin word for toilet “cesou” repeatedly as she was getting into her bunk, before we’d even left the bus station, even though we only went to the toilet 10 minutes before we got on. The crew now look at us like we’re retarded, making such a big deal of signalling and verbalising exactly where the toilet was on the first pee break (the pee break only she requested, repeatedly) that I thought he was going to follow me, unzip and hold “it” for me, in case I missed.
The head of the crew is the driver, a Chinese version of John Wayne, and his crew of 4 helpers. He’s got the swagger and hat, but is missing the spiky star on the back of his heel, but I’ll forgive him. He looks like he and his crew have pounded rubber on these roads for centuries. We should be in safe hands, as Chinese roads are like nothing I’ve ever seen, “destruction derby” springs to mind. None of the crew speak any English so we were hoping what was to come would be simple and straightforward.

Three hours or so into the journey and all is as expected – me, Chinese John Wayne, 40 or so passengers, and my ranting German girlfriend on my left. “Chinese people are so disgusting” (lucky almost no-one in China speaks a word of English) she is shouting at the top of her voice, as the man in the bunk above spits into a carrier bag. Not a subtle spit, the full blown hock and release proudly sported by all Chinese people at 5 minute intervals. There’s a “better out than in” belief here in china so it’s totally okay to spit, burp and fart at will. Particularly spitting, they spit like we breathe, that hoocking sound will be the sounds track to this journey as it has been to the past two weeks. Unfortunately, he’s missed with his latest nasal deposit, and its dripping down the side of the carrier bag hung on the front right of his bunk. Now it’s dripping down the side of the bag and onto Annett’s bunk. The guy on her left is snoring loudly and with enough conviction to make me think he would snore through an Armageddon. I’ve already heard the woman behind me burp and fart numerous times. The person behind her is one of those “phone people”, they frequent public transport the world over, you know the sort – I must take this phone call or the world will end. No I’m far too important to not have the volume set at maximum. She’s taken more calls in the last hour than I receive in a year. All she ever seems to say is “ar” (add a Chinese accent for effect), either she’s friends with a lot of dentists or she has a slightly limited vocabulary. I have a slightly limited patience. In front is the road, what should be just another 11hrs or so of it, snaking through the Siberian like landscape resulting in us crossing a depressingly small chunk of China the colossus.

Onwards to Part 2!

Running a design contest pt.1 – Review of the OLP

// April 1st, 2008 // Comments // Articles/Features, Spreadshirt

So the OLP is now over and it turned out to be a real hoot. Really good fun, the designers liked it and produced some brilliant stuff. I was pretty apprehensive when agreeing to run the Open Logo Project 1.6, as after nearly two years of writing and studying design contests I was finally going to have to run one

I tried a few different things I’d wanted to see in the big design contest sites for a while, here I’ll tell you how and if they worked.

If you missed my earlier posts the OLP is Open Logo Project 1.6 its a contest to design Spreadshirt’s (my employers) new logo. Although its logo, not tshirt design, the basics are pretty much the same there is just a clearer brief. You can find out more about the contest in its About area, it started end of August and closed on Oct 14th.

Top level stats:

- 2,000 registered designers from over 45 countries

- 2,800 entries

- 6,000 uniques at peak

- 3,000 uniques a day average

- 8 weeks in duration.

The 15 grand finalists are here. The two winners were

Here is how we tried to make it different to other design contests and whether the things we tried worked or not:

This could turn into a long post so i’ll take the first few and talk about them some more, the rest I can tackle in another part.1) We wanted to reward more than just the winner = Along with 1,2 & 3 we have 10 different awards and prizes given by us and the panel. More on the panel later. Result: Mixed

I’ve been a planning a “our design contest exploitation?” series of posts for a long time, I’ll get there one day. But I know groups like No Spec! are heavily against speculative work like design contests. I expected when we began to promote the contest that we’d come under fire for exploiting designers, it happen a few times, theres a nice discussion in the Josh Spear comments section of their post about it. So while only one design could win the super grand prize and become our new logo, lots of other people would help on the way. So we added 5 special prizes and a 2nd and 3rd prize (we also ended up giving out a fourth). Here are a few of the special prizes:

The Community Award – In which you can win a whole years worth of shirts from la Fraise for someone who contributes positively to the community.

The Innovativeness Prize – For someone who really pushes the envelope and makes something remarkable. An early front-runner is Bean and whole new alphabet he created for us.

The Collaboration Prize – I’ll talk more about this later, but this prize is purely for design teams.

All in all, the prize kitty was a very respectable €15k!

This has worked pretty well, it was a confusing message but the variety or prizes help promote the contest in different circle, like the la Fraise prize in the t’osphere, the Innovativeness prize (which is Frank Pillers prize and an entirely custom outfit) in Mass Customization circles.

I think most people still think only in terms of 1,2 and 3rd, but I think this area has come into its own at the end of the contest. Those people who don’t win the big stuff might get an unexpected bonus and we get the chance to give prizes to the people that made the contest fun and helped others, instead of creating the greatest art.

Its inevitable that there is some negativity at the end of a contest. Logos are directly comparable in a way that t-shirts designs aren’t. In total we had 2,000 registered designers and 2,800 submissions. Thats a lot of people that didn’t win. Revealing the panel prizes slowly at the end of the contest can distract and also take some of the sting out of not winning the big stuff.

2) We wanted to give the winner exposure = Along with a Macbookpro and €3,000 cash the winner will get recognition that you can’t buy, their photo and an interview in Computer Arts magazine, an interview on Computerlove and a permanent thank you page @Spreadshirt. Result: Great!

This part worked brilliantly. We’ve had over 100 blog posts written about the contest. I think the main reason it spread so well is because of the Computer Arts co-operation. In total over 45 countries had a submitter to the OLP. Its really spread all over the place, way outside of the countries spreadshirt ships to. I think one of the main reasons are the prizes that money can’t buy like the half page interview with the winner that will be in the Christmas Computer Arts logo special.

I’ve also interviewed every winner here to try and give more exposure to their portfolio http://olp.spreadshirt.net/finalists/category/finalists/

3) Having an expert panel. Result: Mixed

We manage to get some great experts on the panel. In the end Scott Hansen (ISO50), Frank Piller, Christophe Martin (founder of Computerlove), la Fraise, and international branding agency Branded agreed to take part. Again this helped to promote the contest as we all pushed it, and each other in our channels. The downside of getting high profile people like this is that they all have time commitments which don’t always make it easy to get the level of involvement that you would like. Their opinions on the best logos are also not always in keeping with ours.

I would have a panel again if I restarted, but I’d look at a way of promoting people from within the community to panel status based on their opinions and involvement in the contest so the panel is dynamic based on activity. I would also make sure I had features written with each panel member before the start of the contest and use these occasionally throughout the contests duration.

4) I wanted people to discuss not give a score and leave. Result: Mixed

Votings nice, its an effective way of sorting designs and gives people a way to be involved even if they aren’t fluent in english. Without it people are more likely to comment and discuss what they like and don’t like. Voting can become the sole focus of the contest looking at whats popular, and make of break the design. We decided to skip voting all together, but allow commenting. Some of the most popular designs have 40 or so comments, which is great but I wouldn’t say we have as many comments as I would like (around 5000 or so). I guess for a t-shirt design site voting makes a lot more sense, as the voters will use the end product, where as only we (Spreadshirt) will use this end product.

More to come in the next parts of this series.

How transparent is too transparent?

// March 18th, 2007 // Comments // Articles/Features

I think most companies have got the point about being open, honest and transparent about how they work. Customers are ever more demanding than ever, and the first step to building an relationship impervious to competition is honesty right? This is who we are, this is what our brand stands for. When you use our service this is what you will get. But how transparent is too transparent?

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Tshirt Blogging/Customisation Q&A

// February 14th, 2007 // Comments // Articles/Features

I (and I think most of the t’osphere) was contacted by a student from London School of Fashion looking at customisation and blogging in, well, unsuprising fashion. I thought I’d post my replies to her comments here, I’m not sure how interesting they are but its easy content so I cant resist

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Success breeds success…

// January 23rd, 2007 // Comments // Articles/Features

I’ve always believed that the funny thing about success is how easy it is to replicate once you already have it. Pixelotto from Alex Tew is the perfect example of this. I was obscenely jealous of million dollar homepage, but I was more jealous that now that project had been a success pretty much anything he tried next would achieve some degree of success. Pixelotto was a really bad idea, I made my thoughts on it clear here. But it still earnt him a cool $140k in a week. Not a bad little earner, for a bad idea. His brand (as long as his next idea isnt as shit and he protects it) is worth more than the money he’s earnt from MDHP. As soon as he launches a new sites, 8000 websites right about it, he has a captive audience. Thats 7999 more than would write about one of my ventures. Success really does breeds sucess.

Another example of this happened in the t’osphere last week.

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The T’osphere

// January 17th, 2007 // Comments // Articles/Features

The t’osphere is becoming an increasingly crowded place. I’d say there are at least 20 very active tshirt blogs now. The problem with all this activity is there is bound to be a large amount of overlap in

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Threadless Research now available

// December 19th, 2006 // Comments // Articles/Features, General, Mass Customisation, Threadless, Virtual Community

The Threadless guys kindly agreed for me to add my dissertation to HipHipUK entitled

“Do consumers want to design unique products on the internet?”
A study of the online Virtual Community of Threadless.com and their attitudes to Mass Customisation, Mass Production and Collaborative Design.

It will go up later today but the page is ready here http://www.hiphipuk.co.uk/research/

I surveyed over 200 hundred people from the Threadless Community and the result is 85 fun packed pages of research, pretty graphs, bad spelling and grammar all about Virtual Communities, Involvement vs Uniqueness, Manufacturing Approaches, Design Contests, oh and tshirts.

I didnt want it to sit gathering dust with the ideas going out of date, so hopefully somebody might find it useful.

I’ll also use some of the content on future posts here in the next few weeks/months.