Everyone Loves a Model

Or at least, everyone in China loves BEING a model.

In truth, I should have quite a few more pictures to support this story, but I've since discovered that a good number of the ones that were relevant were way too washed out; also, if anyone can tip me on how to embed video into these blog posts, I can put up a couple of those also.

Anyway, so, roaming around Shanghai, if you go to any of the "nice" parts of the city, you have a better chance than you could ever expect of stumbling across a modeling photo shoot. Recently, a good friend of mine from San Diego, a guy named Nathan, came to visit for two weeks, and despite the fact that I've already been experiencing this phenomenon for about a full year, it was nevertheless amazing just how many models we came across. Almost every day, we saw at least one photo shoot.

In addition to this bevy of modeling, there's also a huge market for photo shoots with companies who will just take nice pictures of you for you to treasure and think you're prettier than you really are. A lot of those are wedding photos, but not only.

A few months ago, I was in the southern Chinese province of Fujian, in the city of Xiamen. Right next to Xiamen is a tiny little island with Portuguese colonial history named Gulangyu, and my friend Jing and I came across this little scene:

Within this picture alone, I believe you can spot four different photo shoots going on. I don't want to flog this particular scene too much, but I need to share at least one more photo of it:

This girl in particular was also obviously doing a wedding photo shoot (although the groom was curiously wearing jeans), but the shoot was entirely about her, and she was certainly acting like it. I found that a bit distasteful, but, what can you do.

Actually, on that particular small strip of beach, Jing and I saw I think anywhere above 6 different people getting photo shoots at the same time, and just around the corner there were yet more.

Down in a slightly more secluded alleyway, we found this scene:

This, as far as a lot of the photo shoots I've seen go, was about as secluded as it gets.

You see, the thing is, all the talk about how many people there are in China doesn't really do justice to how crowded it is. Its really difficult to find any isolated place of beauty that can still be practically reached. Of course, people want these sorts of photos to be in a beautiful place, as well as looking beautiful themselves in these places, so they have to make do with what they can around the country.

Xiamen in particular, especially the Gulangyu portion, is quite well known for being pretty, and so its a really popular destination for this sort of thing.

This photo here, as well as the next three, were all taken in a suburb to the Southwest of Shanghai in a place called Songjiang New City, in a small housing development called Thames Town. The area is meant to look like what they believe old England to look like, succeeding and failing in different parts.

Anyway, it turned out to be another popular picture taking place. Just look at the evidence:

Another four or five photo shoot scenes on display here, in front of a Disney-esque fake cathedral.

This here is a lady being prepped via make up and hair styling for a forthcoming shoot.

And a wonderful statue of Darwin looking away in disgust (or distraction?) as another wedding photo shoot is taken behind him.

Note: Chinese men really dig the white tuxes.

Some of the costumes on display here were really quite outlandish. I mean, just take a look at the dress that one girl was wearing in the first of these last four photos. It looked more like a flamenco rehearsal than anything else.

At one point, I also saw a guy who was wearing what appeared to be an airline pilot's jacket, and a pink shirt and normal navy trousers. Meanwhile the girl he was with was wearing yet another flamenco influenced dress. There's just no explaining it sometimes.