After a long break from urbex in China, I am back on my blog with an interesting exploration: an Olympic ruin in Beijing. The Spectacle of Post-Olympic Architecture in Beijing While I have been exploring many abandoned buildings in this city, it is only recently that I decided to engage with the issue of the […]
If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity will be a non-place. Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, London, Verso, 1995, p. 77-78. This report is about a « new town » near Tianjin called […]
This month, I spent a few days in Datong, and I had time to go back to some of my favorite abandoned places in China. One of them was the coal gasification plant. My many visits there, from 2015 until 2018, allowed me to discover many treasures… If you are interested in the historical background […]
This report is about a very nice place, one of my favorite abandoned factories in Beijing, located near a mountain in a suburban area. Nature slowly starts to grow back on the industrial structure. I will not give too many elements about this factory because I would like it to remain intact. It has a […]
It is really time to exorcise this place. I give away the address of this « haunted house » in the title because renovation started at the beginning of 2016 so it is no longer accessible and when it reopens, it will never look the same as before. One of Beijing’s most famous haunted houses This report […]
In the old city of Shanghai, I visited the Xiaonanmen Bell Tower. The structure of the tower is an interesting mixture of concrete and steel forming an arch: it directly relates to the Eiffel Tower. According to online reports, this Bell Tower was built in 1909 by Shanghai City’s firefighters’ association. It used to be […]
Datong is a strange city with a lot of derelict places to explore: residential ruins after demolition, unfinished-abandoned buildings. On the day I found this place, I was looking at demolished ruins in the city center. This used to be a primary school… The slogan says « specialized education » but I could not find information about […]
What a funny coincidence, the Shanghai Auto Show just finished on the same week that I discovered a Toyota-related ruin in the city! I am proud to present to you my latest exploration: the site of the former Toyota Cotton Mill. Actually, I noticed this place last year during a bicycle ride and already I […]
During a bicycle trip along the Huangpu River in Shanghai, I saw many projects of redevelopment for the many industries located next to the river, such as West Bund (the biggest I’ve ever seen!). But these projects did not interest me as they altered too much, even demolished the former buildings and industrial complexes to […]
