More Views from China

Hello, all! So, as mentioned at the end of the previous post, today's entry will have more photographs that I took during my latest trip to Mainland China. I apologize for the unimaginative title - naming things has always been a challenge for me. 

The photographs in today's post were taken in Xianhu (Fairy Lake) Botanical Garden in Shenzhen, China. Since my visit was during the onset of winter, there were not many flowers in bloom; however, I still very much enjoyed walking through the park. Anyway, without further adieu, let's see some photos!

Bamboo forest

The park itself occupies a relatively vast area that can be covered by foot in a day's time and offers a cheap site-to-site transportation at various points inside. My starting point happened to be a trail that led me to a bamboo forest, which can be seen in the photograph above. For those of you who are PC gamers, doesn't the scene look like it's straight out of Crysis? (If you haven't played this game, then I recommend that you try it...it's one of the few games I actually played thru!)

Banyan tree

Walking through the bamboo forest, I eventually came to a field full of leafless and flowerless bushes. Eventually, I realized that each bush had a different type of flower, which must look amazing during springtime or summertime. Moving onwards, threading behind the foliage, I eventually came to an area with a lake and a funky-looking tree whose branches appeared to shoot towards and into the ground, becoming a part of the root system. After taking in the sights, I followed a walkway along the shoreline and soon came to this odd flower:

Bottlebrush, cultivar unknown

I had actually seen this flower at the Lianhuashan Park that was mentioned in the previous post and didn't find out what it was until returning stateside and asking again on the DP Review forums. Apparently, it's a bottlebrush flower of undetermined cultivar. In the next photo below is an Ardeola bacchus, which was identified again with the assistance of the Internet. Ah, the joys of modern technology!

Chinese Pond Heron lookin' at ya!

The next stop was a greenhouse-like dome that is home to a huge collection of cacti. It was quite impressive to see how many different types of cactus they grew there. Below are just two of the bunch:

Fat cactus...

...skinny cactus

Down the ways from the cactus farm was a petrified forest. Yes, a petrified forest in the middle of a botanical garden! Puzzled at first, I soon found out from a nearby placard that the various specimens were transported from regions such as Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang. 

According to the placard, these petrified trees are from some 156 million year ago, during the Jurassic period. Below is a close-up view of the cross-section of one of these petrified tree trunks.

Close-up of petrified tree trunk cross-section

Last but not least are some flowers that I saw along the path on the way back to the entrance of the park. While these flowers look large in the photographs, they were actually on the small side at ~0.25" in size. It was quite a challenge trying to focus on these with my DMC-ZS3 in low-light conditions but I think they came out pretty nice!

In the past, I had some difficulty in deciding what to post about. With these photos handy and some more left to go, that decision is much easier. For the next post, I'll finish up with some photographs of the foods I ate and the view from the plane on the ride back. Till next time!

Views from China

Over the holidays, I made a trip to China and as usual, took as many photographs of interesting subjects as possible. This time I came prepared with a second battery for backup. I'm still quite partial to landscape and botanical subjects as you'll soon find out!

My first opportunity for taking photos was Lianhuashan Park in Shenzhen (near Shenzhen Library). I went on a weekend so it was very crowded with people young and old looking to spend a leisurely day out in the sun. The park is situated off a relatively busy road with the main entrance adorned with a pretty arrangement of red and yellow flowers:

Not sure what this flower was

Yellow Chrysanthemums

Walking past the entrance and into the park, I found a group of bushes with a beautiful salmon-colored flower. This flower demanded not only my attention but also the attention of other park-goers who snapped away as I did.

After snapping a few dozen pictures, I continued on my way and shortly thereafter, came to be under the shades of these tall palm trees. Being in subtropical China, Shenzhen had relatively warm weather even in winter. This was quite the opposite of my home in East Coast USA, which was digging itself out of a blizzard at the time!

I couldn't resist taking a shot from directly below on of these towering palms:

Next to the palm trees were several specimens of this tree that reminded me of a peacock's tail. A young family asked me to take a couple of photos of them in front of it and I happily obliged.

These next plants were what I now assume to be ferns whose brilliant colors caught my attention as its leaves were backlit by the sun.

Upon entering Lianhuashan Park and seeing that there was a pathway to the hilltop, I was determined to read it. I walked and climbed for approximately one hour before I reached the summit, on which a viewing square was built for tourists to enjoy. The first thing I noticed was the breathtaking view of Shenzhen from atop Lianhuashan:

View of from the top of Lianhuashan (Shenzhen Museum, right-hand side)

In the photo above, Shenzhen Museum can be seen on the right-hand side of the photograph. This building's roof looks like the horns of a bull. This museum contains mainly dioramas showcasing Shenzhen history from ancient to modern times. Also situated on the top of Lianhuashan is a statue of Deng Xiaoping, the statesman who guided China towards a market economy. Being a national icon, many people were having their picture taken in front of the statue's base.

Statue of Deng Xiaoping

While on my way down from the viewing square, I kept my eye out for anything that I didn't see on the way up. These flowers were quite pretty so I snapped some shots:

Well, this concludes my photographs from Lianhuashan Park. My next entry will have photos that I took during my outing to Xianhu (Fairy Lake) Botanical Garden, also located in Shenzhen. Stay tuned!