The arid landscape around Ordos was never a forgiving place. Its remoteness and lack of ground water always kept growth in check. Now the Inner Mongolian mining center produces a third of China’s coal and the municipal government decided to use the extra revenues to literally build an entire new city. Located 25 kilometers west of the old town, the Kangbashi/康巴什 new district sports a museum, opera house, library, cultural center, sculpture parks, malls and endless rows of megablock housing. Designed to accomodate a population upwards to a million people, only 30,000 have decided to make the move into the newfangled developments. For now the strange new city that popped out of the sands remains largely deserted. Only a handful of locals walk amidst the abstract shapes and glass-covered malls of Kangbashi. It is one of many locations in China that point to a real estate bubble just waiting to pop.

Earlier this year Alexei Perry Cox of the Handsome Furs contacted me out of the blue about using the name of my book, Sound Kapital, as the name of their new album. Since most of the songs were related to their experiences in China, she thought it would be a cool way to pay homage to the alternative music scene and further their connection to the Middle Kingdom. I quickly consented, of course, after which Alexei made a further request to include my photography in the album design. She proposed to juxtapose my blueish Tuanjiehu waterpark series with an orangish nightfall Portland series photographed by Bradley Sellers. The results are quite stunning. Moreover, the music is great and getting solid reviews by Pitchfork and Spin. This is the first time I contributed to album art outside of Chinese bands, and I am proud to have provided the name of my book to their own musical ventures. The Handsome Furs are touring like mad right now in support of their new album. I am lucky enough to catch them on August 18 at the Bowery Ballroom. Rock it out if you can.

One of my first assignments for Time Magazine is finally in print. I spent a few days in Guangzhou earlier this year shooting formal portraits of vegetable stall owners for an article on rising global food prices. A combination of natural disasters and inflation continues to create a spike in food prices across China. Affordable basic necessities such as electricity, food, water and transportation are always a mainstay of the Chinese Communist Party, but these increases seem to be beyond their control. Consumption of food across China is rising dramatically in line with increased wealth in both rural in urban areas. Everyone wants pork and extra rice at dinner. Many of the figures in the article are actually quite alarming. Global food prices already increased 39% over the past year, food production must increase 70% by 2050 to meet the demand of swelling populations and the average amount of meat people consume has doubled over the past three decades. Despite our profound ability to manipulate our environment, we are going to have to rectify many of our eating habits, not only to combat increased food demand, but also to stave off the rising spectre of obesity. Still, I am going to have my fill of tacos while I am in New York City this month.

I am back in New York for the next month starting my MFA Art Practice program at the School of Visual Arts, so excuse my delays in posting new material. After shooting Han Han for the New Yorker I was able to escape to Changsha to witness the Meeting of Styles graffiti gathering. Over a hundred graffiti artists from all over China congregated in the city that once witnessed Mao Zedong’s conversion to communism. Street art in China is still in a very nascent stage, so I was greatly impressed by the wide variety of styles on display smack in the middle of Changsha’s waterfront. Quite frankly I was a bit surprised the local powers that be even approved a graffiti event of this scale in the first place. The artwork ran for hundreds of meters, stretching out from either side of the Xiangjiang River No.1 Bridge – a major transportation artery in Hunan’s capital. The video below walks you through the core of the murals created during the Meeting of Styles. I met a ton of really interesting graffiti artists while in Changsha who I will be following up with individually across China.

Han Han/韩寒 is China’s bad boy blogger, pop star, race car driver, lady killer and political-dissident-dabbler extraordinaire. His personal blog has garnered upwards to half a billion hits, and he ranked second in the 2010 Time 100 Poll for the most influential people in the world (granted there was a viral movement in China to boost his rankings). This week Evan Osnos profiled him in The New Yorker and my portrait accompanied the piece (there is a paywall, but Evan posted two related blog entries). Photographing Han Han in Shanghai was surreal. I think he is inured to contrived studio locations so he seemed a bit surprised when I met him on the street and started dragging him around to dirty internet cafes just off the Bund. Still, Han Han went with the flow and fully cooperated despite the ad hoc nature of the shoot. Quite frankly he is really easygoing and always down for a joke. A few people recognized him on the street and at the last Internet cafe we visited where I shot the published portrait, the manager flipped out that Han Han was present and allowed us to do whatever we wanted. Still, his popularity is a double-edged sword. Some people were scared to let them into their establishments while others couldn’t believe their luck.

After shooting Han Han in Shanghai I got to meet up with him one more afternoon at the Zhuhai International Raceway, just outside Macau. He was in full race mode. Bantering with the other drivers and strutting in and out of the pit, Han Han seemed at ease in the air conditioned confines of his sponsor tent. I feel Han Han is actually rather crowd averse. He mentioned that he was working on a new book, but otherwise seemed a bit resigned to his current daily routine – keeping things subdued ever since the crackdown on other outspoken activists around China. There is a boyish air to Han Han, and he is just as pleased to hone his skills behind the wheel instead of injecting caustic commentary into the Chinese zeitgeist. Despite the whirlwind of cars and speculation, Han Han is in no rush and has plenty of time to devise his machinations.

My portrait from Sound Kapital of Subs lead guitarist, Wuhao/吴昊, appeared on the cover of Courrier International. If you buy the magazine and speak French, please translate the article for me. The Subs are AWESOME. They are one of the first bands I saw when I returned to Beijing in 2007. Expect some big features next week, including photos in The New Yorker and Time Magazine.

This Wednesday, Phillips de Pury & Company will host a silent photography auction in New York City to benefit UNICEF, one of the leading international organizations working for children’s rights, their survival, development and protection. Most of the selected images were taken in regions of the world where UNICEF is active, and I personally donated a few from Tibet and Uzbekistan for the auction block. The top image of the abandoned Guge Kingdom was taken in 2007 during a traverse of Tibet. One of the most renowned kingdoms existing within Tibet, Guge was a major hub for Buddhist interchange between India and Tibet and boasts some of the most important Buddhist frescoes in the region. All of this came to a dramatic end, though, after a conquering Ladakhi army slaughtered most of the inhabitants in 1630, leaving the great fortresses city to crumble into the mountainside. The bottom two images were taken a few months later in Bukhara, one of the great ancient Silk Road cities strung across Uzbekistan. Once home to Emir Said Mir Mohammed Alim Khan, the last emir of the Manghit dynasty and the last direct descendant of Genghis Khan to serve as a national ruler, Bukhara straddles both the past and present with its UNESCO World Heritage city center and the surrounding ramshackle adobe housing peppered with satellite dishes. Truly an amazing place. Tickets should still be available so check out the website for more information.

Beijing is chock-full of branded events these days. Whether it’s Diane von Furstenberg at Pace Gallery or Louis Vuitton at the National Museum of China, many fashion houses and luxury brands are trying to wedge themselves into the lucrative Chinese consumer market by pairing up with “legitimate” cultural institutions. Calvin Klein was no different when they rolled into Beijing and threw a party at Club Tango featuring performances by New Pants/新裤子 from Beijing and Far East Movement from Los Angeles. New Pants played a very short set including my current favorite “Sex, Drugs, Internet” while the Far East Movement rocked the energetic crowd with their “Like a G6″ hit – see videos below. Otherwise, one corner of the dance floor was dominated by a specially constructed mini-studio where people could be videotaped dancing around a white room in the same manner as recent Calvin Klein advertisements. The only caveat was that anyone entering the box signed away their rights to the video in hopes of being selected for a future Calvin Klein campaign or web feature. People around the mini-studio could also watch live feeds of the antics occurring inside via flatscreens built into the siding. Overall it was a rather ingenious ploy to get people to freely relinquish rights to their personal images for commercial purposes. Events like this occur every few days in Beijing as international corporations continue to drum up a consumer frenzy throughout China.

Thanks to my new friend Alex Chao, who just arrived in Beijing to take over art direction at China Vogue, I was able to contribute for the first time to China Vogue this month. It was also a perfect match since the magazine was running a big music issue and decided to let me cue up on some of the old school rockers in China including Cui Jian/崔健 (the godfather of Chinese rock), Shen Lihui/沈黎辉 (general rocker and founder of Modern Sky) and Zhang Youdai/张有待 (the DJ who introduced rock to the masses). First of all, I was very excited to get a chance to shoot Cui Jian on the D-22 red wall. He really is a pillar in the history of Chinese rock and greatly influenced a whole generation of China with his anthem “Nothing to My Name” which became a rallying song for students in China during the 1980s. Although I might not be the biggest fan of some of Shen Lihui’s music, his importance as the founder of the Modern Sky music label and festival production company is undisputed. When other record companies refused to release his music in 1997, he went his own way and founded Modern Sky to support a new generation of Chinese rockers and then continued to take this music to larger audiences with the Modern Sky Music Festival and Strawberry Music Festival. Shen Lihui will undoubtably be a force in the future of alternative music in China for some time to come. Although I had never heard of Zhang Youdai before, he seems to be an instrumental character in the history of rock in China as well. He became a DJ and host on Beijing Music Radio back in 1993 and introduced a wide range of music to youth across China. He is a true shaker in China’s emerging entertainment market and is rocking out to an Eric Clapton LP in the China Vogue portrait. Mad respect.