My name is John Salvino and I live and work in Beijing. I moved here from Toronto in January of 2018 to start a new job, it’s been such a great experience, I’m really enjoying my time here!

For part of the job, I am lucky to be able to travel around China and do photography! So far I’ve been to 13 cities in China: Beijing, Shenyang, Qingdao, Chongqing, Hohhot, Nanjing, Hefei, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Tianjin, Shijiazhuang, and Xi’an, with hopefully many more to come.  I’ve also managed to visit Hong Kong, Macau, and Taipei.

As well, during last Spring Festival, I spent a couple of weeks traveling through Vietnam, and then Thailand last summer.  I’ll be sharing some photos and posts about my travels soon!

For years I worked in corporate IT, but eventually I wanted to do something more creative so a few years ago I left my corporate job and started doing freelance web development, with the intention of travelling more often. I had wanted to see China for years, for longer than just a couple of weeks, so in 2017 I decided that working here would be the best way to spend a long time here and really immerse myself in the language and culture.

This site is a home base for my main interests, which include…

Photography

My main hobby is photography, and I enjoy blogging about it, here you will find my photography blog posts. If you look through my photos, you’ll that I mainly like shooting landscapes, cities, and architecture.  Living in Asia is amazing for all three types!

Back in 2016 I visited Iceland, it was such a different experience from shooting in a big city.  There were so many incredible landscape photography opportunities there, here are some photos I took while I was there.  It really helped fuel my desire to do more travel photography.

Every other Tuesday, I share one of my favourite photos along with a blog post where I talk about the story behind the photo.  I call them Photo Stories, what a clever name.

You can also find some of my photography on my Unsplash and Instagram pages, feel free to follow me!

Music

I’ve loved music ever since I was a young kid, originally hearing my parents listening to 8-tracks on their awesome stereo, then using my allowance to purchase 45s, then albums, cassettes, CDs, MP3s, and now to streaming. It was great living in a big city like Toronto, I had the chance to see many artists, both popular and not-so-popular.

I listen to and enjoy so many different genres of music, my music library is quite a mix, and definitely includes some guilty pleasures :). You can find my music posts here.

Music is so important to me and such a huge part of my life, I really wish my words could do justice to how much it means to me!

Every other Tuesday, I share one of my favourite songs along with a blog post where I talk about my thoughts about the songs.  I call them Song Thoughts, what a clever name.

Languages

I’m currently learning Mandarin, back in 2015 I wrote the HSK Levels 1 and 2 exams. I was concentrating mainly on characters at first, but have recently started taking Mandarin classes to help improve my speaking and listening skills. One of my goals for 2020 is to pass the HSK Level 3 exam.

I also know quite a bit of Italian and French, I did a minor in Italian in University, and took French all through high school and more recently took a couple of years of night classes. Like with Mandarin, the main thing I need to improve are my speaking and listening skills.

You can reach me at my Contact page or through the social links at the bottom of the page!