Style Gallery Blog

On of my favourite classical Chinese gardens is the Yu Yuan Garden in Shanghai. It’s located in the old part of the city, just south of the Bund riverside walkway. The garden is today inside a restored tourist street area that surrounds Shanghai’s Town Gods Temple. However, the hustle and bustle of tourists and the noise of the city all disappear when you step through the garden’s gate.

The is the World Financial Centre building in Shanghai. I grabbed this shot using my mobile photo in June 2009. The posts and wall at the foot of the picture are part of building work for the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. This was just a grab shot. I didn’t take allot of time over it. No tripod or lighting. Just a quick point and click. However, it has turned out to be one of the most popular photographs in my collection. By all rights, it shouldn’t be. It has many errors in it. The picture isn’t completely sharp focus. There’s a bit of camera shake. There are posts and fences encroaching in the bottom and so on. But none of that seems to matter. People, generally just like the view of the building stretching up into the night sky.

When you think of China, you think of the Great Wall of China. The Wall has become iconic of the country. It has been said, “You haven’t been to China if you haven’t seen the Great Wall of China.” And in 1935, Mao Zedong famously said, “If we fail to reach the Great Wall we are not men.” This picture of the Great Wall of China was taken near to Badaling, just north of Beijing. This is by far the most popular tourist location on the Great Wall’s 6000km length. It is also the most heavily restored section of the wall. Much of what you see today is not the original wall, but the modern restoration. For most tourists, this is fine. They get to see the wall as it was and wonder at how it was constructed. However, if you walk up the mountains to the end of the tourist zone, you will find the view above. Here we can see the restored wall come to an end and leading into the distance is the original, unrestored, Great Wall of China. Signs warn tourists not to proceed any further and these should probably be heeded. By restricting tourists to the restored sections, we leave the other sections untouched. The should be left alone, undamaged.