We travel the world directly investigating the local effects of world events, shifts in culture, disappearing traditions, social upheavals big and small, strange shit, as well as the more mundane intricacies that hold it all together. Our authors have free reign to say what they feel, we don’t triage opinions, or have an ironclad angle.
Vagabond Journey has been featured on MSNBC.com, The Daily Mail, Business Insider, Gizmodo, the Des Moines Register, CBS Phoenix, NBC LA, and numerous other international, national, and local publications.
Site stats
- More than 60,000 unique visitors per month.
- An Alexa rank between 100,000 and 300,000.
About Wade Shepard
What would become Vagabond Journey was founded in 2004 by Wade Shepard, who has been living and traveling around the world since 1999. Countries and territories Wade has visited. Although he can be found in pretty much any corner of the world at any given time, Wade is often somewhere in China — a country that he still finds fascinating, confusing, and completely enthralling even after years of being there. Wade has a B.A. in Global Studies from Long Island University’s Global College. He is the author of Ghost Cities of China, a book about China’s urbanization drive that was published in the Asian Arguments series of Zed Books. He is currently working on a second book for Zed about the New Silk Road and a short volume for the Penguin Specials series about the revitalization of China’s countryside.
Wade is a columnist at Forbes, and a regular contributor to many other news publications, including The Guardian, Reuters, The Diplomat, the South China Morning Post, and CityMetric. His articles have also appeared in China Daily, Wanderlust magazine, The New Inquiry, among others.
Wade has been featured in, appeared on, or interviewed by a large number of top publications, including VICE, Forbes, NPR Morning Edition, The Guardian, BBC World News, CNBC Squawk Box, CBC The Current, New Statesman, the Quietus, Huck Magazine, the South China Morning Post, Shanghai Daily, Geographical Magazine, Vesti 24 (Russia), Carta Maior (Brazil), Radio 6PR (Australia), Chatham House, China Daily, Time Out magazine, and many others.
CNBC Squawk Box:
BBC News:
ABC News (Australia):
Vesti 24 (Russia):
ABC News radio:
Radivision:
Filmography
Documentaries
Footage contributions
The 25 – Coincidences, RTL Television Germany, Aired on September 25, 2019.
China’s eerie ghost cities a ‘symptom’ of the country’s economic troubles and housing bubble, ABC News, The World. Aired on June 26, 2018.
Terra Xpress: Unruhe am Chiemsee, ZDF, Aired in September 2014.
Still the Not So Great Mall of China, Daily Mail, January 9, 2013.
Wade’s public appearances
- University of Michigan, February 18, 2020
- Stand with Hong Kong event, Copenhagen, Denmark, January 22, 2020
- Reconnecting Asia launch event, Washington, DC, October 25, 2016
- Univeristy of Lodz, Lodz, Poland, May 11, 2016
- INDEV Urbanization conference, University of Waterloo, Ontario, February 26, 2016
- Arthur Probsthain Bookshop, London, April 22, 2015
- Waterstones Piccadilly, London, Ghost Cities of China book launch, April 20, 2015
- Royal Asiatic Society, Shanghai, March 31, 2015
- The Bookworm Literary Festival, Suzhou, March 29, 2015
- The Bookworm Literary Festival, Chengdu, March 28, 2015
- Beijing International Literary Festival, March 26, 2015
Go to the events page to see Wade’s upcoming speaking engagements.
Wade’s personal social media accounts
Vagabond Journey’s main topics of investigation
Though we report on anything we find intriguing, our coverage usually falls along the following lines.
- Ghost cities of China
- The New Silk Road
- China
- Shanzhai manufacturing ecosystem
- Urbanization
- Disappearing traditions
- Culture and society
- The effects of globalization
- Vagabond lifestyle
Funding
Vagabond Journey is independently funded through advertising and donations from readers.
This is a blog
Vagabond Journey is a blog, and blogging is best done when it shows a mind in motion. Expect mad ideas, untested hypotheses, and typos. This site is made up of the raw test runs before the final products which are delivered in books and articles on larger publications. This is also the personal stories of the writers, so expect trivial details and occasional bouts of indiscretion. Yet again, this is a blog.
Site credibility
Vagabond Journey relies first and foremost on the first hand experiences and observations of our writers for information. This is the primary way that we are different than many other news/ culture publications. Our correspondents are on the ground in the locations they report from, they live in the places they cover, they interact with their sources face to face, and they seek to find out for themselves how the issues they chronicle shape and change the world we live in. In this way, our reporting blends the divides between journalism and travel writing. While we rely heavily on other sources of information to provide us with a fuller picture of what we investigate, the experiential element is at the core of our methodology. For this reason, we are not afraid of venturing into the subjective, as we strongly feel that individual observation and experience should be at the core of all good reporting.
Awards and honors
- Top 190 Resources to Save you Money from Wisebread.com
- Top 5 Blogs from Practical Ecommerce
- Top 75 money saving blogs list from Savingsaccount.org
- Top 10 Blogs to Watch in 2011 from Johnnyvagabond.com
- Top 40 Travel Resources from Wisebread.com
- 100 Best Travel Blogs frm Onlinedegrees.com
- 9 Most Successful Bloggers of 2010 from Offtrackplanet.com
- Great Modern Travelers Hall of Fame from Thelongestwayhome.com
- Top 5 travel blogs from Guidetoonlineschools.com
- Winner of Abroad View Magazine’s 2009 writing contest, immersion category
- 99 Best Travel Blogs from Travelblogs.com
- Best Budget Travel Resource from Topsitesblog.com
Contact
We can be contacted here. We have no address or phone number as we don’t maintain a fixed physical location.