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!

Geronimoooooo!!!!!!

WHAT A DAY! Today's market action was one of epic proportions, one that I was "lucky" enough to witness. The DJIA index was down more than 1,000 points intraday, with a cascading free-fall over the course of 20 minutes that saw the index lose nearly 600 points. In particular, Accenture (ACN) saw its stock price drop from $40 to $.01 in a single 2-minute candle! In the following rebound, also of epic proportions, the DJIA recovered about 400 points in less than 10 minutes' time. Crazy, huh? Here's a screenshot of major indices:

Well, now news agencies are reporting that erroneous computerized trading may be the cause of the wild swings that affected virtually every sector. Some exchanges, including the NASDAQ, have cancelled trades during the free-fall. I wonder what big-bank trader fell asleep on the "sell" button, haha. It'd be interesting to see what repercussions that this mistake will have on trading regulations, if any.

While my 401(k) took another body blow, my position in AUY mentioned in a post earlier this week recovered nicely as gold returned course upwards. Some pundits are calling for gold to reach new highs as investors seek safe haven from depreciating currencies.

I'll close today with a picture, from my trip to mainland China, of the Great Wall at Badaling Pass. It's rapidly approaching summertime and I feel the travel bug biting again. A new adventure would be a great opportunity for me to experiment with my upcoming DSLR camera! I will be posting more pictures from my trip in future posts so, enjoy!

Bloom, Peony...Bloom!

Last night, as I lay on the futon trying to fall asleep, a rather unsettling chain of thoughts stumbled across my mind. The anchor appeared to be the age-old question(s): "Why are we here? What is our purpose?" It wasn't that I hadn't wondered about this before or that I suddenly had some novel revelation. Rather, looking at it now, the whole sequence might have been triggered by me thinking how unfortunate it was that our family dogs, like all other dogs, have such a short lifespan relative to us, their trusted companions. (Oh, great time to insert a picture of the two newest members, both toy poodles...)

So just what is the reason for our being? What do we hope to achieve by living? Obviously, these are not questions that can be resolved with a simple blog post. So, rather than attempting to find an all-encompassing answer, my thoughts revolved around my own path in life. It seems that for the better part it, I have been living for the future, rather than the present. Do I have a master plan of some sort? Not that I know of. 

While I made it into (and eventually, successfully out of) the undergraduate mechanical engineering and graduate systems engineering programs at an Ivy League university (Go Big Red!), I remain uncertain what it is that I am seeking in life. Is it wealth? Is it happiness? Do I pursue my personal goals? Do I make some sacrifices in order to fulfill my filial duties? After nearly an hour of contemplation, weaving in and out of consciousness, I came to a rather anticlimactic conclusion: balance.

Balance, huh? Just what the heck am I talking about? It's quite simple actually...I can have it and do it all! Well, maybe it's not as simple as I'm making it out to be. For example, my bank account is currently higher than it's ever been and yet, I continue to stash away most of my paycheck each bi-week, like a busy honey bee hoarding nectar. As my coworker posed to me, "Can [I] take it with me?" Generally, the answer is a pretty certain "No!" This led me back to a concept that, for better or for worse, has guided me in life: everything in moderation. 

So, long story short, I had justified to myself that I can go ahead and spend my hard-earned money in moderation or more specifically, buy a new DSLR camera since it would bring me happiness by allowing me to pursue my new hobby. Admittedly, I may have reached my conclusions as a part of an intricate, round-about plan for self-justification. Alright, enough introspective babble...let's see some pictures!

Here's a Paeonia suffruticosa, one of a genus of plants commonly referred to as peony. This particular cultivar is called the "mudan" in Mandarin Chinese and has long been used in traditional symbolism. I only found two of these in the backyard and the other one should blossom later this week. I took a couple of more pictures from different angles/distances:

The mudan cultivar of peony has a particularly nice petal arrangement as well as a pleasant fragrance. As the traditional floral emblem of China, it was declared the national flower by the Qing Dynasty in 1903. Here's a closer view of the mudan:

Peony can be classified by two methods: plant type and flower type. According to the article linked above, it is not easy to distinguish between the different species of peony and the number of species is not clearly established, ranging from 25 to 40.

This about wraps up my second post. In hindsight, the first half of today's entry seems a tad bit "heavy" but that's what a blog is for right? Stay tuned for more pictures from the front/backyards as summer rapidly approaches!