My end of China (southern Jiangsu, south of the Yangtze) is home to a lot of sprawling megamarkets. A few months ago, I drive over Changzhou's border with Yixing, a small county-level city that actually belongs to Wuxi. My intent was to find an epic stone market I had passed on the bus traveling between the two cities. I thought I would never actually have access to it, but I have a Chinese driving license now. Once I actually found the place, it was about as surreal as it could get in terms of the random pairing of states.
Godzilla, obviousl
Faceless ghostly kids near religious figures.
Mao Zedong next to Guanyin, the goddess of mercy.
Jesus and Buddha.
Darwin, who came up with the theory of evolution. Next to him happens to be Lei Feng, the Chinese model worker who died when a telephone pole fell on him.
Guanyin, again, with some rather demonic looking renditions of Disney classics.
These statues are for sale, so it's not like the curation or placement is deliberate. Anyhow, it's been months since I took these pictures, so I am getting an itch to drive back soon.
