5 min
Lost in Ordos: Drifting through the Ghost City
A bunch of european rippers go in search of an empty skateboarding kingdom in Inner Mongolia.
The Chinese city of Ordos; built to house over a million people, but currently home to just a few thousand, contains all the essential ingredients of an amazing giant virtual street park except that here in the ghost city, everything is ‘real’.
Korahn Gayle, Daniel Pannemann, Thaynan Costa, Alex Mizurov, Antony Lopez and Bastien Duverdier arrived in Inner Mongolia late last year, just before the cold returned across the south of the Gobi desert. They found a surreal, and at times disorienting place.
Created in a matter of months, brand-new empty buildings line the winding, deserted streets of Ordos City. Across hundreds of square kilometres, futuristically-designed museums compete with monuments dedicated to the glory of ancient Mongol warriors for the attention of no-one in particular .
In the heart of this half-lit urban mirage, we wayfared in search of skateboarding adventures. This is our experience of the city, frozen in time within these images.