I recently had the good fortune to be able to travel to China with the Mentor Series Treks. We travelled with them to Egypt three years ago and it was amazing. This trip covered much of the south of China. We flew into Hong Kong, then with a combination of 4 domestic flights and a bunch of time on buses we ended up in Beijing. In between we had a chance to see a lot of this beautiful country and bring lots of pictures home to share. I will be sharing the photos over a series of posts in the next couple of weeks.
On the last day of my visit to China, I found myself with a little time before I had to leave for my flight home. My hotel was just blocks from The Forbidden City in Beijing. We decided to take the shortest-ever photo expedition to The Forbidden City. I brought one camera and one lens (24-70mm). Here is what I came away with after less than 2 hours from getting in line for tickets to walking out of sight of the City.
To see the photos in full resolution, just click on any picture.
I expected the approach to the city to be ugly and mobbed. What I found was beautiful and peaceful with people relaxing and fishing. It is clear that in China, the size of your pole really matters. Several people were fishing in a pond with fishing poles that had to be 18 feet long. This photo proves my constant photographic preparedness. I took it with the last settings from the night before when I was shooting pretty much in the dark (ISO 4000).
Once inside, you are confronted with beautiful buildings spaced far apart with vast courtyards. We arrived in time to be among the first people admitted for the day, but we had plenty of company. After exploring for a bit, it became clear to me that pictures of big buildings with lots of tourists was not going to be satisfying. What also became clear was that there are an infinite number of beautiful, artistic details literally covering the city. I set out to capture as many of those details as I could.
Some of the details are larger works of art like these 4 examples. Most are very well worn from exposure to the elements, pollution and from constantly being touched by visitors. Many, like the green lion, have a patchwork of hundreds of little repairs that look like Band-Aids stuck all over the statue.
Other interesting details are parts of buildings. Here there are two examples of roof details and two of ceilings. The animated roof decorations are a very common theme throughout Asia and China has a unique set of themes that are repeated in many places we travelled. The top ceiling is a rotunda in a pagoda. The bottom ceiling was a surprise found inside a pavilion used for tourists to sit and eat fast food. This detail was just above a trash can. The Chinese tourists were baffled about what was so interesting to me as I worked to get the best detail possible while holding my camera above the trash can pointing straight up.
Some of my favorite Forbidden City details are the architectural pieces. These bits of doors, posts and walls are all hand crafted and truly beautiful. It is hard to describe how many of these features adorn the city. They basically cover much of most of the buildings. There are just thousands and thousands of them.
My absolute favorite details in the Forbidden City are everywhere, but still hidden in a way. These are the hand-laid pebble mosaics that line many of the walkways in the city. These beautiful works of art are made of individual, colored stones with some hand-carved stones to add detail. The 4 images above are of mosaics that are less than one square foot in area. There are hundreds and hundreds of these and I did not see a pattern repeated. I understand that these are not as easy to see as some of the other images, but they are worth studying. Each of the pebbles is less than 1/4 inch long. Many of them are polished on the top of the pebbles from the constant foot traffic. I did not see anyone else even look down at them. They are just the pavement in parts of the city.
I leave you with a cute image of a Chinese girl in traditional headdress who was, basically, stalking Cyn and me through the city.
More Later!
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