TREK - A Travel Blog by Austin Mann » China

Chaping

Austin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:49:25 +0000

We spent a little less than 24 hours in Chaping (where the concert was ) and during that time I had a few extra minutes to roam the streets… Here’s some shots of the amazingly joyful and happy people I bumped into…

These people were nothing but smiles yet they almost all lost their homes, jobs and and even lives of their close friends and family. Their resiliency was remarkable. After I got back from walking around a bit, it was time to shoot the concert and it started to rain!

Sorry there’s not more text in this post… I spent the last hour fussing with my blog trying to make it behave properly… ended up having to take some images down but as usual its getting late and I am tired!

Concert Time Lapse

Austin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:22:45 +0000

Sorry about the video in the previous post… it just now finished converting. Anyway, shortly after we arrived in Chaping I climbed up a construction site and I put a fisheye lens on my secondary camera and mounted it on top of a piece of rebar (overlooking where Steve was going to play his concert.) Then I set up a timer to make the camera shoot every couple of minutes…

Here’s the fives hours of concert prep and concert condensed into about 16 seconds… I catch something new every time I watch it! Look for the tarp going up on the stage (because it started raining)

Tons of people came out, despite the rain, and many were brought to tears. By the end of the night, people were asking for Bible’s and wanting to know more about God. It was really powerful and amazing to see.

There’s a whole bunch of images in the works but I have to run right now so keep an eye out, but check out this portrait from this portrait… I was trying to get myself up high to shoot the concert and this super nice guy was kind enough to let me get on his balcony.

Thanks for reading!

Beichuan Concert

Austin — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:15:20 +0000

The 36 hours we have spent at and around the epicenter of a major earthquake (7.9 richter scale.) The quake demolished many cities and was felt in 9 countries (as far away as Tuva, Russia…near 2000 miles away) More info on this can be found here. We spent time in Chaping where the guys played an incredible concert…tons of people came out despite the pouring rain nearly the whole evening… Then this morning we headed out to the former city of Beichuan…

Words and pictures really can’t explain this tragedy…many lives were destroyed and some 20,000 people were never recovered from the rubble. Steve, Caleb, Will Franklin and Geoff put together a quick little show for some of the kids that lost one or both parents duriing the quake. It was way cool and I know it really encouraged a lot of the kids — they loved it.

I have many pictures to come soon but for now am posting a video of the show in the classroom. I hope to have a bunch more content online in the next 24 hours.

MBHOH

Austin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:15:07 +0000

Well, we’ve been in Luoyang a few days now and already leave tomorrow! So glad that we finally made it here and were able to be around for the Grand Opening of Maria’s Big House of Hope (MBHOH.) As I promised in the earlier post… here’s a few of the photos from the grand opening…

During the opening ceremony, Steve played a couple of great songs, they cut the ribbon, they broke the ground and more…

We went back to MBHOH today to spend some time with the kids which gave me an opportunity to get some more images. I climbed the construction building again and got a neat shot of the building.

We were really aiming to capture the stark contrast of this building (bright blue) and its surroundings (all grey and dull) so I climbed to the top of a 12 story construction building nearby to get some shots of it from above.

We also got truckloads of neat images of the group loving on the kids like this one of Stevey Joy …

Before we left MBHOH, we took a bunch of group shots but also walked on every floor through every room as Steve played the guitar and led worship. It was a really neat time of prayer and Scripture, asking God to bless the people and events held within the building.

Here’s a short clip from our final few minutes spent at MBHOH:

Tomorrow we fly to the earthquake site and I don’t think we’ll have any internet access whatsoever so I’ll be out of touch for a couple of days…I’ll be back with updates soon! Thanks for your prayers –

Great Adventure…

Austin — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:35:13 +0000

Today was the opening of Maria’s Big House of Hope… everything went great and it was a really incredible day. The new building is fantastic, clean and will impact the lives of so many Chinese children…

I got a ton of images today but it’s late and I’m tired but thought I would upload this one video… Steve and Caleb and Will played a little concert for a bunch of the kids and they loved it… here’s a taste!

The Great Wall

Austin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:18:38 +0000

We safely arrived in Beijing and are now at one of the foster care homes near Beijing. Yesterday we went to the Great Wall which was pretty cool… we rode a ski lift to get up to the wall itself, because it runs along the top of cliffs…

Then we hiked around the top of the wall quite a bit…. many many many steps. Apparently the Chinese designed the steps to be very inconsistent so that if the enemy ever did overtake it, they wouldn’t be able to run or move quickly along the top of the wall because the steps were all different sizes… great defense for them… unfortunately it proved to be pretty tiring for us too!!

It wasn’t easy getting up to the top of that thing with my camera pack on but it was worth it once we (less than half of the original group) finally got there. The mountains are gorgeous and you can see for miles!

It’s crazy to see this wall, one of the most amazing and vast man-made structures in all history, just get swallowed up by the magnificence and magnitude of the mountains and landscape it sits in. It took man thousands of years to build something that doesn’t even hold a candle to something God created in a split second. It’s pretty humbling to take in.

After we had spent quite awhile up there… it was time to go back down…after hiking back to where the ski lift dropped us off… we had two choices… either take the ski lift back down (yea… riiiight…) OR take the alpine slide down. It was just like the ones you see in Colorado except it was a metal track… and wow you could really get moving on these… I snapped a couple photos on the way down… (that’s Caleb in front of me, going wayyy to slow

Well…now I need to go pack up a little bit for our trip to Maria’s Big House. The grand opening is tomorrow and there is a lot to come together for it. Watch for updates with some images from the opening tomorrow!

Off to China!

Austin — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 22:48:32 +0000

Tomorrow I leave for Beijing! I can’t believe it’s already here… I’m excited to be going over there with Shaohannah’s Hope. Check out their site!

I will be photographing the grand opening of their amazing new building along with a number of other events.

We’ll be bouncing around all over the place, mainly in Beijing, Luoyang and Chengdu. We’ll be visiting a number of places that could present some pretty cool photo-ops so definitely stayed tuned!

Please keep this trip in your prayers – for strength and health for the team and also for the impact God will make on everyone (both us and the Chinese) on this trip.