Sensing...A Lack of Sense

Sense memory. What an interesting thing it is. While going through my photo collection earlier this evening, I came across a set of photos that I had taken nearly a year ago. It was another time, another place, another world, and...another me. Yet, the very sight of these photographs brought back a flood of memories. I immediately remembered exactly where I was, what I was doing, what I was feeling, and...who I was with.

Time: Winter 2010-11; Place: Shenzhen, China. I was in another existence...I was another person. In a foreign country that I had been to before but in a city new to me, I was taking up the sights of Window of the World, a theme park that featured over 100 reproductions of the world's most famous tourist attractions. Here, I saw, among other replicas, the Eiffel Tower, Angkor Wat, the Leshan Giant Buddha, and Vatican City. Here, I continued an eye-opening experience that I had begun nearly two years earlier. It was during this time that I saw the most amazing things in my life and experienced sensations that I had never before felt. It was during this time that I was the happiest that I had ever been.

Feeding koi @ Window of the World

The above photo makes me smile. While walking through the theme park, we came across a small waterway, which must have been a reproduction of some famous river. The details of the exhibit escape me but I remember as clear as day the moments before and after this photo was taken. While the sunset was well underway, we heard a lot of commotion in the water. To satisfy our curiosity, we walked to the riverbank and saw a wonderful stock of beautiful koi. Seconds later, the bread I was carrying in my pack was out and being fed to the koi. This sudden introduction of food caused quite a feeding frenzy among the koi, which fough each other to the surface in hopes of grabbing their share. The happiness and joy that we had from as simple an act as feeding these hungry fish is something that I will always remember. Smile.

The next two photos were not actually taken in the park but were taken a few days prior. As with all of the other photos in this post, they instantly place me back in the moment they were taken. I'm a very visual person and for me, seeing is my key to learning and remembering. As a result, seeing these photos again have the effect of transporting me back to a happier time.

Alright, back to photos from the park. Below, we have the curious bottlebrush flower, which I had never seen before in the States. It was windy while this photo was taken and I distinctly remember having to brace myself and time the shot carefully so as to minimize blurriness. The water in the background was flowing swiftly due to the same wind that caused the bottlebrush to sway to and fro. Armed with our cameras, we snapped away, playfully taunting each other who could capture the best image. Not to brag or anything but I won. Grin.

Bottlebrush, Callistemon

Walking a short distance around a wooden walkway, we soon came to water-bound flowers that I remember to be water-lilies. They were fenced in by these metallic cages that served as convenient perches for Chinese pond herons. In the photo below, a heron is looking directly at me as I took its portrait using the highest zoom setting my camera had. During this time, my companion's camera ran out of battery power and luckily, I had a spare to replace it with. Thumbs up to being prepared.

Chinese pond heron, Ardeola Bacchus

Leaving the lake area, we walked some more until we came to a biosphere that housed a huge variety of cacti. Some were rotund while some were skinny like the ones below. I particularly like this photo because the cacti look like fingers reaching up from the ground. While I snapped this photo, my companion was wandering around elsewhere taking a plethora of photos of the other cacti. Yet another inductee into the wonderful world of photography. Smile again.

Cacti

Walking. There certainly was a lot of it while going about the park. After the cacti biosphere, we walked and walked until we came to this barren land filled with large bodies that resembled trees but yet looked like stone. What were they? Where were we? The power of the Reds situated us smack in the middle of a petrified forest. Reading a nearby placard, I found out that the park had the petrified wood shipped from the western regions of China all the way to Shenzhen. I'm glad they did since some had really beautiful patterns, such as the one below. This particular one was from a large tree trunk that was polished to a shine. This photo resets my mind's eye, generating me images of my companion counting the tree rings in the cross section, trying to determine the tree's age. Smile yet again.

Petrified wood

After inspecting the petrified wood, we walked a while before finding the next site of interest. Here in a garden with busts of famous Chinese plant biologists and botanists, we stumbled across numerous bougainvillea bushes. Due to the overcast and still windy conditions, it was hard getting the correct color of these flowers as well as freezing their movement in the wind. Again a friendly contest was set and we snapped away. At one point, I nearly had my camera taken from me by my companion since my colors proved to be more accurate. Seeing this photo reminds me of my companion's frustration while trying to get the perfect shot. Of course, smile. And grin.

Bougainvillea

I don't know if it is the lack of photographic subjects outside that interest me with the onset of milder weather but my thoughts have definitely taken a more introspective turn. Given the amount of thinking that I have done for the past half a year and continue to do, future posts will surely have more of my thoughts interwoven with photographs that I've taken. In fact, I've already written a future post while sitting on the LIRR this past weekend heading home from NYC. These all tie-in to an overarching theme of decisions that we make in life, mostly questioning whether they're right or wrong but for now though, I think I'll take a break and rest my mind.

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!