Fan Ladies
And now for the last of the Chongqing series. This was also almost the last photograph taken at the end of our Yangtze River adventure. It was a warm afternoon. It was the fans that caught my attention as these two ladies emerged from the shop doorway. In order to capture moments like these in street photography you have to be constantly on the lookout, but patience and persistence pays off. And thus our second trip to China, the first was in 1987, came to an end.
Mahjong Game
One of the things you see as you wander around the streets of any Chinese town is groups of people gathered to play or watch others playing cards or mahjong.
This gathering in Yichang was interesting also because of the other activities taking place on the pavement. There is the man fixing the bicycle tire while the bike owner quietly smokes a cigarette in the background. In the foreground is an old and hard-worked communist-era bicycle with a construction helmet in the basket. There is a ship building yard across the street. The gathered onlookers are in discussion with one of the players while the other player contemplates his next play.
Yichang is the closest city to the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River and is one of the departure points for Three Gorges river cruises.
Small Boy in Ghost City
Ghost City, Fengdu, Yangtze River, China
I was sorting through photographs of our 2008 trip to China a few days ago when I came across this image of a small boy squatting in a plant border next to a temple at Ghost City on the Yangtze River. It was only later when my wife pointed it out that I realised what he was doing.
For the whole of our four day cruise on the Yangtze the weather was overcast and the atmosphere smoggy. This added more than a little atmosphere during the stop at Fengdu to visit the Ghost City.
Fengdu is modelled after the Chinese Hell in Taoist mythology, built over 1800 years ago. The Ghost Town has become an island since the Three Gorges Dam project was completed, and part of the ghost town of Fengdu has become submerged. Scenery above the “Door of Hell” has remained however.
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