China in black and white .....

Back from China and I guess it was more exciting the first time there for me when I visited China in 2007. But going back again reminded me how nice China can be, especially away from the city. For this trip, there were two new experiences for me, first was that I had chance to visit Hangzhou and the second is to experience the Chinese wintery cold as in 2007, I was there in Summer.

I am doing something a lil different for this post. I will be posting some black and white pictures. For the colour versions (plus other photos that I didn't iphoto-ed black and white), you can head to my flickr page.

This trip was mainly a work trip in preparation for other trips that will be done by others next year. But I was fortunate that part of the trip included recce-ing sights that may be suitable. One of the places that was new for me during this visit was to West Lake, a famous sight in Hangzhou. You can choose to go on a bigger boat that is air-conditioned and faster or if you have 1.5 hours, I suggest going on one of the gondola like boats like the one shown below in the picture and the guy will take you around the lake in a leisurely manner. Very nice and totally romantic I think. Just that the guy doesn't speak English so unless you speak Mandarin, you may need to read up about the lake on your own first before embarking on this boat ride!

After our boat ride around the lake, we continued with a nice walk around the park. It was such a lovely weather with the sun out but with slight winds blowing. Definitely a nice day for walking outdoors. There were pretty sights like the one below which proved to be popular for everyone to take lots of shots to show the folks at home....

In another part of the lake, there is this cute sculpture of a lil Chinese boy fishing totally naked and he's managed to catch a huge fish too. Like this shot and if you want to see the colour version, head to my flickr page.

In Hangzhou, another treat was the Song Dynasty Performance where they had the reenactment of the history behind the Song Dynasty as well as dance performances by the Chinese dancers of different ethnics such as Middle Eastern Dance, Korean, Indian and even Thai dance. However, I selected the ones below because I thought it came out rather nicely. The one below is part of a Chinese dance ...

The dancers were really versatile and they did a simple Korean drum dance as seen below. Nice.

One of the earlier dance performances from around the world was the middle eastern one and I was surprised when they came out with their costumes to the beat of the middle eastern drums. What I like about this picture is how the movements were captured and it looks nice in colour too!

After Hangzhou, the next stop was Suzhou and although I was there a year and a half ago, it looked different. In summer, the sun was shining and flowers galore. In winter, things were a little more grey and damp. For more pictures from my previous trip, check out my post.

After Suzhou, it's back to Shanghai where we spent a day there and flew out after midnight back to Singapore. After dinner, we went to do a lil shopping at Yuyuan Shopping Area. A lil touristy but it's pretty and you can get lots of nice things from there. But the key word here is BARGAIN, even in the department stores!

I will be putting up more of my photographs at my flickr page so do head there if you want to see more of what I saw in China this time round. What's next? Well given a chance, I would like to head to Beijing-Xi'an-Lijiang for about a week to see the Great Wall of China and the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an and explore the old historical town of Lijiang to see what it's like living in China in the past. So looks like I am not closing my chapter on China just yet! :o)