Feeding The Dragon

Feeding The Dragon
During our recent trip to China, we stopped by Qiandao Lake (千岛湖), or literally, Thousand Island Lake on our way to Hangzhou (杭州). The lake is actually a man-made one with 1,078 large islands and many smaller ones resulting from damming works to build the Xinanjiang hydroelectric station. Many of the islands are “touristy” types — with man-made “attractions” such as the above “Wishing Dragon” surrounded by people clamouring to feed it with coins for good luck. This is a close-up shot I caught with the details in the dragon boosted via post-processing in Lightroom.

在河边喝茶

在河边喝茶
The problem with conventional organised group tours (at least those originating from Singapore) is they hardly cater to us photographer-types: limited stops (both in number and duration) for photography, lots of time wasted on “enforced shopping” (the tour guides bring you to designated places in the hope of earning commission) , arriving at photogenic spots at the wrong time of the day etc. etc. That was the problem I faced on my recent trip to China/Shanghai too, unfortunately 🙁 I was very happy when I managed to get half-an-hour to roam about at the picturesque Xitang (西塘) on the last day of our trip. The above scene was well-spotted by Cy, before I decided to make it an interesting candid shot 😀 The title is a pun on the sign at the bottom-right of the picture — literally, it means “Having Tea By The Riverside”.

Moody Huangshan

Moody Huangshan
Huangshan (黄山) (literally, yellow mountain), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is well known for its scenery and peculiarly-shaped granite peaks. Unfortunately, it is also common shrouded in mist and rain, which was the case when we visited during our recent tour to China. The almost-monochromatic feel of Chinese brush paintings (水墨画) finally made perfect sense to me when I saw the equally monochromatic shots that I came back with! 😛