ARTICLES BY JOCKO WEYLAND
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 RAW CHINA
The BirdmanFor a couple of months I’d been watching the pigeons circling over the rooftops through the window while Mike and I sat at the desk in his bedroom on the 5th floor. This was during his regular hour-and-a-half long English lesson. Their hypnotic synchronized movement touched something deep down inside, reminding me of pigeons coming home to their lofts in Brooklyn...
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  RAW CHINA
My Name Is TennisDriving his white Chang An Ling Mu "City Baby" compact past the 5th Ring Road into the far west precincts of Beijing Coach Johnee surveys the grey murk ahead in the distance. "I've been driving out here every day for three months and I still haven't seen the mountains." Where just two years ago there wasn't anything but farms now there are shopping malls, gas stations and packed-to-the-brim McDonald's. "Wait until you see this parking lot, it's huge," and indeed the...
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 RAW CHINA
A Day with Alfredo Martinez at the Military MuseumThe first thing that catches Alfredo Martinez' attention outside Beijing's hulking Military Museum is a 400-foot-long Scud missile on a trailer to the right of the entrance. "The Russians didn't have GPS, so these are just guided by gyroscopes, which means they're ‘guided' in the sense that they'll ...
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 RAW CHINA
Wu Deshun lives next to a warehouse off Guanghua Lu in what can best be described as a hovel, a cinder block, one-story, falling-apart edifice in the shadow of the almost-completed CCTV headquarters. It's a surprisingly desolate area in the middle of Beijing's breakneck construction zone know as the...
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 RAW CHINA
Photos by Jocko WeylandJocko Weyland is a writer, photographer, and chronicler of skateboarding from America who's currently living in Beijing....
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 RAW CHINA - THE RED GAS STATION
By Jocko WeylandWhen I asked Henry where to catch the 988 bus from Dawanglu he gave me a skeptical look and asked "Why do you want to go all the way out there?" For a lifetime Beijinger, the 988 meant going out to the undesirable hinterlands. Henry seemed suspicious that someone who'd been in the country for less t...
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 RAW CHINA
Wash Your BodyWhen I first moved into the neighborhood I took a walk with my friend who's an old China hand and helped me find an apartment. We checked out the surrounding area and she pointed out some local features, the Italian restaurant, a laundry, a western supermarket. As we walked by a nondescript four-sto...
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 RAW CHINA
Zsa Zsa and the ProstitutesThere's a cafeteria on the second floor of the building open to civilians who don't have ID cards that also includes another cafeteria strictly for students who have ID cards, a bar, a bootlegged DVD shop, a "Western"-style café, a Japanese restaurant, a Korean restaurant, and a bookstore. It's a ca...
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 RAW CHINA
Behind the Green CurtainShe works off a muddy street in the far northeastern outskirts of Beijing in the scrappy, dirty slums that aren't on any tourist maps. Along the road are one-story linoleum-floored buildings where people live in rooms that are bedrooms, living rooms, bathrooms, and kitchens all rolled into one. In f...
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 RAW CHINA
"These death metal maestros make the four horsemen of the apocalypse sound like My Little Pony and Slayer sound like a Ben Gibbard-fronted Abba cover band. If you haven't heard Swedish death metal, you haven't heard death metal. If you haven't heard Gothenburg melodic metal stalwarts Dark Tranquilit...
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 TWO REALLY SHORT STORIES
IN MEMORY
Jenny went to the pool to pick up her mother who was very excited and the first thing she said was, “I just swam with a dead guy!” It was at a pool in Frankfurt where mostly...
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