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57I come from Germany and I grew up in the countryside, in the Black Forest. I have been living in Hong Kong for twelve years. One day, looking through a local newspaper I saw a picture of these people. I was really intrigued by the visuals and thought, “What is going on there?” I eventually started doing some research with some very good friends in Beijing. I said, “You gotta help me out. Where is this, are people really doing this, can somebody find this?”A friend of mine that has lived in China for a long time, is married to a local girl. I emailed her and asked her if she can find out where these people are. She said, “Qingdao is the city where these people and the style are really coming from. My friends said, “We know where this is. You just gotta get there and find the people. Supposedly there are a lot of them, just go and make a road trip”. So I went up to China to meet my friends and we went on a road trip to Qingdao to have a look.Going from Hong Kong to mainland China is exactly the same as it was when the English were there. You still need a separate visa and separate money between Hong Kong and China. It’s only on paper that Hong Kong belongs to China. Financially and politically the Chinese are slowly pushing into Hong Kong. For me, traveling to China is really the same. I need a visa to go across the border and then Beijing is five hours by plane. China is big, so wherever you fly it’s a massive distance.

