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Landscapes of China Part 2 – Pingyao to Nanning
The new China…
Following Part 1, here are some remaining photo highlights of my journey through China. The second half of my trip things got easier to navigate but also arguably a little less interesting and adventurous. Metro systems abounded, high-speed rail linked the cities and the level of English rose. There are no photos after Shanghai as frankly the weather came in so I could take little more than photos of fog. Oh, and of giant penis statues in the Wuhan Sex Museum. But this is a family friendly blog, so they aren’t going up. (no pun intended…)
Pingyao was in my opinion, over-hyped in the guidebook. Touted as the “China you imagine” inside its walls it seem a bit too polished and Disneyfied to me…
The highlight for me at Pingyao was instead its Photo Exhibition which took place in some abandoned industrial buildings.
To be honest, whilst some of the photography was quite good I had more fun trying to take my own
And in honour of it being a photo exhibition I decided to go all artsy and use black and white
You can’t go to Beijing and not try to take a photo of this – interestingly under the Republican period a portrait of Chiang Kai-shek hung in its place …(see here for proof)
They are fans of flags at Tiananmen Sq
People of China – Love your country! (It’s watching you…)
The best way to see the Forbidden City is to avoid it and the crowds of tourists and head instead to the hill behind it in Jingshan Park. Unfortunately the light was rubbish so I had to resort to B&W again.
Beijing’s Summer Palace, burned by the French and the British and now a site for “patriotic education”
Although given that the Chinese Empress decided to build a marble boat with money earmarked for the navy does make you think the Chinese elites didn’t really help themselves much
After Beijing I had to run down to Hong Kong as my Visa expired. I ended up spending a fortnight there as well as visiting Macau before taking the train all the way back to Beijing again. Not the most time effective way of travelling I will admit.
Welcome to Hong Kong
Fishermen by one ofthe typhoon shelters on HK island
Hong Kong’s greener side
In HK a day trip to Macau is well worth doing, interesting architecture!
Possibly the most famous image of Macau – St Pauls cathedral ruins
Some buildings are less modern. A colonial fort now faces out across a frankly hideous casino
Meanwhile, back on the mainland…
Nanjing is well worth a visit. It was the seat of government for the Nationalist forces in China and is the site of Dr Sun Yat-sen’s mausoleom, considered the father of modern China by both the Nationalists and Communists
The flag of the Republic
View from the mausoleum
The old govt. buildings are now a museum
I’ll be honest, before I visited Nanjing I only knew of it as the site of the infamous “Rape of Nanking” there is another site of “patriotic education” commemorating the event.
Another must see city in China is Shanghai, if nothing else because it gives me an opportunity to mess around with night photography. There is also a Monorail, I’ll probably put a separate post up on that.
The historic Shanghai Bund. Chinese flags now fly from every building
The new financial heart of Shanghai
And by night
So there we go, 2 months and lots of experiences later its time for the next leg of my journey. I look forward to coming back to China in 2015!
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[…] Part 2 to follows on here… […]