China Temples

Posts about China, 2 of 7.

Temples

One thing that I find amazing is the number and quality of temples.  I realize that the Chinese people have been very religious in the past but after the Cultural Revolution and the current philosophy, I would not have expected the high role temples play in people's lives.  Part of this is more tourist points rather then religious.  Now is probably a good point for a tangent, the impression that I get of Chinese tourist is they would like to get to a certain point, take a picture, then travel to the next point.  The idea of exploring or going off the path tends to be foreign to the older generation, maybe the younger ones will be different.  (And yes I drove the tour guides batty since I was always wondering off, aka tours that they expected would last 1.5 hours lasted 3.)

Here are a set of Beijing temples with their parks.


Art work; some of which is being restored or rebuilt.


Here are the temples of the inland China when we visited there.  The cities are Kunming, Dali, Lijiang and Shangri-La.

Here in Kunming we found this temple with the city built right up to it.  There is now regret about letting development come so close to it.  This shows the changing attitude in China.


Confucius's home town.  This was a change of pace.  Most of the other temples have either been rebuilt, restored or redone in some fashion, here things have not really changed as much.  It was nice to see the faded and chipped paintings.


Confucius's cemetery.  Here only descendants of Confucius can be buried.  There are many tombs and this last picture is Confucius's tomb.

The Great Wall

Posts about China, 1 of 7.

Well just got back from a 3 week vacation in China.  We tend to travel around once we get to China.

Great Wall.

Today the couple that was showing Jennah and I around Beijing took us to the city of Jinshanling.  It's about 100km outside of Beijing and a couple of their friends joined us.  This was one of the most enjoyable outings so far since their friend is also a photographer, he knows the area and also knows the famous photographer Zhou Wanping, who lives very humbly next to the Wall he loves.

With that introduction, I learned a lot about my camera, lens and how to shoot pictures all together.  So unlike the main tourist section of the Wall in Beijing, this section has less reconstruction and a lot less people.  I was surprise that there was less than 50 people about when we where there and a lot of my pictures I could take without anyone being seen.

So we cheated a bit, we took the tram up to the top and avoided the hike.  Since my guides where my seniors, we saved our hiking for the wall itself and that brings me to the first picture.  This is the first site that you see off the tram.



This is is a bit deceptive because once you walk past that set of bushes you are presented with this.  It was very hazy or rainy the whole time I was in China.  Which on a side note was a good thing for the farmers and people since there has been a long 3 year drought.

Looking left.

Looking right.

Now this presented a problem, I wanted to explore the whole thing and now realized that I could spend a couple of days doing it.  As it turned out I only got the three of the battlements.  The one in the first picture is the starting point from the tram and from there you can turn right of left.  We turned left to go to the one battlement that has the least to no reconstruction.  This is a picture of it from the approach.

I guess now is time for a few select pictures.

This is the group that showed me around.  The only language that we shared was photography.

Venus Transit

Pictures from the today's Venus transit of the Sun.  Here is the very first little bite being taken from the Sun.  Picture basically taken with the C90 spotting scope.

A few pictures as the bite gets bigger and leaves the edge.


Here we are fully in the Sun.


Here is one taken with my 300mm lens.

Lastly, one with the C90 but hand held (rested on a post) but with high altitude clouds also toward evening.

USS Nimitz

Yesterday was the celebration of the Golden Gate Bridge's 75th birthday.  For the celebration, the USS Nimitz made a visit.  Thus I tried to capture a picture of it going under the Golden Gate.
The weather was very hazy.  I also tried a different vantage point.  Probably a better place would have been on the San Francisco side but I was not wanting to brave the crowds.  (I also had a different birthday party that I needed to get to that I did not want to get stuck in traffic.)

If I was on the other side, I would not have been able to get this picture of the Nimitz with SF in the background.

On a side note:  This is the incredible story of an amateur photographer making history by documenting the Golden Gate Bridge construction.  This is the story of Ted Huggins.