China Edit

First part of full edit will be ready by next week. In the meantime, check the teaser.

Boards for China Edit #1 from Maxwell White on Vimeo.

About: Boards for China

I have always felt that Travel and Skateboarding are similar in that the best part of each are the people and places you experience along the way.

The idea of bringing boards to China first occurred to me while on my first trip to China in late 2009.

While walking with my dad through an outdoor shopping mall I heard the unmistakable sound of skateboard wheels rolling over smooth marble.

I had been in China for two weeks, skating solo the entire time, needless to say I was eager to track down the source of the commotion. I was expecting to find a group of teenage skaters just like you would find in any American town, but when I rounded the corner I was surprised to see a boy who could not have been older than 8, rolling back and forth. I would later find out, through an intrepeter, that the boy's parents worked at a shop in the mall and he would tag along, skating outside the shop all day while they worked. With neither my dad or I able to speak Mandarin and the boy and his family not able to speak English, a language barrier existed to say the least.

After a brief, awkward moment I breached the issue by kneeling down, holding my board up to his eye level, and then flicking the wheel to spin it. He waited until the wheel stopped spinning and then did the same to his board, laughter broke out from both families and almost instantly a game of follow-the-leader ensued.

In the 20 minutes we skated nothing much was said, smiles replaced words as the primary method of communication. Towards the end of our laps around the perfect marble plaza one of the kid's wheels suddenly locked up and predictably he slingshotted off his board and slammed onto the polished stone floor. No tears, just a look of "shit happens all the time" came across his face. I looked on the ground but there were no rocks to be found. As it turned out the problem was the shoddy bearings in his wheels would unpredictably seize causing him to slam over and over.

The bearings are a perfect example of how China cheaply replicates any and every consumer good known to man, especially western-man. But like all cheap pieces of shit, you get what you pay for and none of it lasts. What really sucks is that kids there don't even have access to real boards and accessories, they can't order online and the closest shop is in Hong Kong, which is technically another country.

At that moment the sheer irony hit me: a huge percentage of major American skateboard companies' decks are actually manufactured only hours away from where we were skating in China, but they are all shipped back to the U.S. and Europe to be sold, leaving only generic garbage, similar to what you would find in a walmart, in China for the kids to skate.

The mission was clear and simple: Get this kid a real board and his friends too.

"Boards for China" is all self filmed footage from the trip that I just returned from.

Click HERE to watch the first trailer.

Best wishes and safe travels,

Max

Above and below: Photos from that day.

Special thanks to Andrew Martin at Galaxie Skateshop in Newport, KY, Ran Barnaclo, and Mormo Jehomo for helping me round up all the decks and parts for the setups.