More Photos from Tong Li

The last photo is of a Cormorant fisher with her birds. The cormorants are tied to posts on the boat, and the woman gives them a little shove into the water with a pole she carries. She smacks the water with the pole (I'm not sure why, maybe it attracts fish, or maybe it scares the birds) and the birds dive down into the water. When they come up with fish in their maw, she grabs them out of the water, reaches into their beaks and pulls out the fish. She repeats this process with all four of her birds.

Tilt Shift Tong LI

This post doesn't really have to do with Tong Li as such, although it was the perfect place for me to try out some tilt shift photography (which you may have read about on my other blog). Basically, with a little help from our little friend photoshop, ordinary photos can be made to look like miniatures. Seems to work best with landscapes, although I do like the way the boats came out.







Oh, and do check out the video of the fish in the last post if you haven't yet. I'm quite pleased with the way it came out, and man- those fish were weird!

Tong Li Part II: Fish!

The fish.
The mad rush of gils and fins.
A constant struggle for survival,
for dominance
in the small pond
of life.
The horror.
The horror.



The horror.




Video Fish!:

Music:Bathtime in Clerkenwell by The Real Tuesday Weld

Tong Li Introduction (Part I)

There's a lot to show and tell about our visit to Tong Li, a small watertown near Shuzhou, and this is already a busy week for me (and its only Sunday night). So I'm going to blog about Tong Li in smaller bits - 'bite sized pieces', if you will.

On Saturday morning, we arrived in the second place near Shanghai that claims the name "The Venice of the East", and this did hit a little closer to the mark. Tiny roads run along the banks of small canals which are criss-crossed by stone bridges. The town has three main bridges (or only three bridges?) which are supposed to bring luck to whoever crosses all three. It seems that there's a lot of things that we found you can do here to bring luck; so if you didn't get a chance to hit every bridge, there is surely a rock nearby that you can rub for an equal amount of good karma.

Tong Li is the second town that Kim and I have been to (the first being Clovelly in England) that has an entry fee to the town for tourists. That struck me (both times) as a bit silly, especially when the tourists usually bring in a lot of money in other ways anyway. However, it was well worth the price of admission, but we'll find out why in part II...

Shuzhou Montage

This video shows a few scenes of Shuzhou, the small water town of only five million people that I wrote about in an earlier post. As you will see, Shuzhou is famous for its canals and gardens. I've also once again included my now favorite dinner time activity (besides eating): the "Lazy Susan Cam".

I somewhat hesitantly chose to use the Seu George cover of Bowie's Life On Mars for the background music. Even though the lyrics are fully irrelevant, this song has always communicated to me a sense of distance and unfamiliarity. Shuzhou, unlike Shanghai, does not have the feeling of being in a western city. However, if the odd combination of Portugese lyrics from an American song in a Chinese City is too much to deal with, you may turn off your volume before hitting 'play'. I just like to think of it as a Multicultural Video.

Toy Mall!

The big styrofoam relief Transformer Dinosaur was our tip off to the existence of the "Toy Mall" in Shanghai. Four Stories of action figures from your favorite anime, plagiarized playstations, stickers, dolls, and even anime-inspired clothing. One cool store was full of little vending machines that contained everything from Black and White Classic Mickey Mouse figurines and Nightmare Before Christmas Paraphanalia to tiny educational 'invisible man' anatomy miniatures.




One cool store was full of little vending machines that contained everything from Black and White Classic Mickey Mouse figurines and Nightmare Before Christmas Paraphanalia to tiny educational 'invisible man' anatomy miniatures.


There was even a vending machine selling tiny toy vending machines.

Police Raid!

The funny thing about this police raid at the knock-off market on Nanjing Lu is that every other store in the multi-storied complex is also selling counterfeit goods. I wasn't sure how the police would react to my taking a picture of their work in action, so I kept the camera at hip level, and snapped the photo without looking as I pretended to examine some fake Nikes.

Please, Save the Bumf.

Won't you think about the bumf?



(Hat tip to Rachel who took this picture)

Shanghai Montage

Suzhou!

Shanghai is great, but one month in a city without leaving is a little much for me. So Kim and I took a trip with a few friends down to Suzhou, also known (quite inaccurately) as the "Venice of the East". Don't get me wrong, Suzhou, like Venice is beautiful (and touristy), but a city has a few canals and then all of a sudden its "The Venice of the (fill in the blank)". More memorable than the canals are the beautiful gardens with scholars' stones big enough to walk through and small ponds and streams filled with koi. In the picture above I'm standing in front of the "The Temple of Mystery". Don't I feel stupid for forgetting my fedora and bullwhip. Although the temple has an adventurous sounding name to the Western Ear, it is actually a Song Dynasty Daoist Temple. Three 55 foot giant golden statues greet you as you enter, and there are numerous other beautiful statues of Daoist deities around the periphery.

The Master of the Nets gardens are supposed to be the most beautiful in Suzhou, and I don't doubt that claim. Here are some pictures:






This is our friend Sue, the PE teacher in a maze of scholar stones.



This is a statue outside the "Temple of Mystery":



...and this is a guy on a boat.