Zhoushan 2004 - sand sculpture

I mentioned in my last post that I had a twinge of pain in my shoulder at the end of working in Canada. Well that pain had developed into full blown tendinitis. I couldn't lift my right arm and the pain felt like someone was sticking a rusty piece of metal rod into my shoulder. Unfortunately there was no time to give it the rest it needed to heal. Niall, Hanneke and myself were off to China.

Around the world in crappy days

So, along with Niall I traveled from Harrison Hot springs in British Columbia to Zhoushan, China via London. If you look at the globe I think you will realise there was a shorter way. but unfortunately we only had a map and going over the edge never occurred to us. Our flights were even more complex than that when we missed our first connection. We hooped on the first flight going in our direction and spent the next three days making our way around the world booking tickets as we went. The fault was not ours and the flights were covered by the organisers in China.

One armed bandit

Finally when we arrived our bags were nowhere to be found and we needed to get to work. We bought a few clothes and borrowed some tools from our fellow carvers. Not being able to work with your own tools was a pain and my shoulder was in a very bad way. I am right handed and don't have the dexterity with my left hand to do details so I came up with a technique of holding my right wrist with my left arm and using that to steer my hand to where I needed it. It was like having my right hand stuck on at the wrong angle to my left arm. But the show had to go on pain or no pain. I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.

Zhoushan has a sand festival that has happened for many years and still goes on till this day. Nowadays there are mostly Chinese carvers with a few international brought in for show. It's a really nice place in the middle of nowhere but with some of the worst beach sand I have ever worked with. Everything had to be carved at an angle so as to not collapse.

Wedding cake

Our first mission was to make this terrible couple who just got married. It made no sense in the overall theme but they wanted it so their wish was our command.
The Chinese still have a very hierarchical system and it was very difficult to communicate with them about what exactly they wanted. Niall Made the woman and I the man. As you can hopefully see the sand was so bad we couldn't give them necks and resorted to making then get much bigger as they went down and using her dress to fill the most of the bottom for support.

China crysis

Niall was driven mad with the Chinese asking him again and again to change her face so as to make her more pleasing to them. He really didn't know what they meant due to language barriers and we were both getting very frustrated trying to care. We both hated the sculpture when finished.

Niall's and my bags showed up after around a week so we still had a bit of time to work with our own tools and change our underwear. We went on to work with all the other international carves finishing off the large pile of mostly architecture. Niall, Hanneke (Belgium), Kirke (Estonia) and myself made this little market street to join everything together. It was a bit more fun due to the laughs we were having and the Chinese orgainisers just leaving us to it.

The rest of the project was mostly carved by the locals. Consisting of mostly Architecture and dragons. The weak sand really made everything, including our work look like decorated cakes.

The cast and crew

We had fun as a group in the evening and we even shot a short film for fun. in which we nearly all starred. That is still not edited all these years later and lies under my bed on around 6 or seven tapes in a box. It was quite ambitious. With all the frustration of working with our hosts I think that this being creative in making our own little project in the evening gave us all a great laugh and created some nice memories. One day I will edit it, when I have time. It will be an epic.

Here's a pic of the gang having our nightly feast. From left. Lars, Daniel (With broken arm) Niall, Interpreter?, Hanneke
, Jeroen Advocat, Jeroen Van De Vlag, Kirke and Dave.
I was sad to say goodbye but glad that I was going home to rest and see a doctor about my arm.

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Ps

Thanks for reading. I use Steem to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, among other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Steem blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.

Temporal nostalgia - sand sculpture

Mirror mirror - sand sculpture

Duncannon miniature - sand sculpture

I hope you'll join me again soon
@ammonite