WuYuan – Carvings

While we were not too sure that WuYuan is the most beautiful village in China, while there, we have seen buildings of great architectural and historical value.

Here is a picture showing carvings on a building.

They are so  delicate and vividly show so much of life.

Understand in the Cultural revolution, they were covered up with mud, to prevent people damaging them.

This village was not readily accessible in older times, this has helped to preserve the carvings.Things, however, are changing – a high speed rail is being built to reach the area nearby.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Broken ( Houses at Dubrovnik )

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I like the houses at Dubrovnik – all of them having terracotta roofs, quite uniform albeit a bit cluttered together.

In our walk on the walls of Dubrovnik, we came across some old and broken buildings – which presumably were damaged in the Civil War of the last century.

For reasons unknown to me, they were not rebuilt.

I took the opportunity of photographing them, as a reminder of how ugly a civil war can be.

One photo shows the close up view while the other one gives a general idea of the setting.

Please enjoy 🙂

Weekly Photo Challenge : Enveloped (by Plants)

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These are images showing houses enveloped by plants – vines and wild plants and sometimes, even flowers.

They are local examples.

The pictures were taken in the northern part of the New territories of Hong Kong.

I may go back some other time and see whether the plants have taken all over.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Converge (at Dubrovnik)

I like the architecture in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

They reflected their achievement when it was as busy and famous as Venice, just across the sea.

I particularly like the lines of buildings which seem to converge at a distance.

There are so many things in the buildings I like – the windows, the texture of the walls, their neat lines and features.

Please enjoy!

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Endurance ( Coastal Buildings)

How many years can a mountain exist

before it is washed to the sea?

These are the familiar lyrics from Peter, Paul and Mary’s Blowing in the Wind.

How many years these coastal buildings endure?

Here are some 3 photos taken by CP, they show buildings in Hong Kong built near to the sea – buildings subject to the natural environment – wind, waves and accelerated corrosion due to the proximity of sea water.

Heaven knows when and how big are the coming wind and waves – we are in a world subject to super typhoon and wind driven waves and surges.

Maybe, tomorrow will come a 1 in 200 years typhoon and waves will shoot up the air, maybe, just maybe . . . . . . .

But right now the people in these coastal houses are enjoying their sea view, enduring the inconvenience of transportation etc.

So, how many years can these buildings exist?

The answer is blowing in the wind, my friend, the answer is blowing in the wind  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Weekly Photo Challenge: Between (Houses)

I feel I should continue on with last week’s WPC of Between.

After my last two posts of Between (Columns) and Between (Walls), it is just natural that I should also post on Between (Houses).

On our trip to the Baltics, one of my favorite themes of photography was to photograph houses.

I like the colors of the houses and the quiet cobble stone alleys.

Here is my favorite picture taken in a quiet alley.

The picture will be a lot less interesting if not for presence of the cat on the street.

I have an almost exactly similar photo without a cat . I can appreciate what a difference a cat (for many, it is a beloved pet) makes to the picture!

So, this concludes my series.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Between (Walls)

I am running late for this WPC.
After submitting an entry on Between (Columns), I can’t help submitting another one for Between (Walls).

The picture was taken in Dubrovnik, Croatia. We walked high up the hill with houses, passing many alleys, until we reached this alley.

I like the light pink color of the walls, but this picture has many other interesting features.

You can see plants and flowers hanging out from the houses, blanket hung out for drying, a balcony and what’s more – between the walls is a narrow cobbled footpath.

Above the footpath is a small bridge linking two houses.

The Croatians must love planting very much. On this small bridge, there are green plants and two women who appeared to be doing some gardening.

I was fascinated by narrow alleys and houses in Dubrovnik and couldn’t refrain myself from taking more photos!

Nubian Village near Aswan, Egypt

This must be one of the poorest villages I have ever visited.

We travel up and down the Nile in a felucca.

One of our stops was to see a Nubian Village. We landed and saw this village.

We walked along narrow alleys and watched how people lived.

Whereas many of the Nubian houses are painted in colors, the house we visited were just plain.

The homes were neat, large since several generations share a home. The homes sit on the desert, so the floors are sand, which is free and can be easily changed every few years. The homes are built of mud bricks and have high  ceilings to keep them cool.

Coming from a relatively modern city, we were  taken aback on what we saw.

We realized that the comforts of modern cities are not available everywhere and we should be grateful for what we have.

PS Picture scanned from an old negative taken in year 2000.

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Home

This week’s photo challenge is Home.

I would like to feature homes of animals ; like bird’s nest, fox holes, lion’s den, small crabs having a beautiful shell as home and tortoise carrying a hard “home” around. However, I don’t have such photos!

I also like to know how the other 6 billion people in this world live; what sort of residences they call home. I know a house is not a home. However, how often you are allowed to take pictures inside other people’s home. So my collection here are houses or other people’s home as they appear to a tourist.

I like homes with a lot of plants. My apartment has a lot of plants, houses with a lot of plants make me feel homey. We saw this house on top of a pharmacy in Annecy, France with a lot of green plants. The plants  spreaded out to several floors; we were drawn to it.

Not far away from this house are houses built on the edge of a river course in Annecy. What’s it like to live hard against a river?

Back in Fung Huang (Phoenix ) ancient city of China, we like these house along the river with a pagoda in the background.

High up in the tea plantation of ZhangJiaJie, we were intrigued by this house which has a bit of lake in the front. Access to the house is by way a series of stepping-stones in the water. The house seemed to have been wedged in between two stone faced hills.

This thatched house in Shirakawa-go in Japan is a very rudimentary form of a house, with A- shaped steep roofs and  located next to the paddy field.

I like houses overlooking rivers , lakes or seas. These houses overlook the Bosphorus in Turkey. The sun was setting, these houses just stood out against a darker background.

Even in the same country, the living condition of people can vary widely. In Cappadocia, Turkey, some people lives in limestone caves. In the picture below, you can see car parking just outside the limestone residences.

Many people do not have a view out to water. Although Dubrovnik, Croatia is close to the sea, these houses are bounded by the seawalls and do not have a sea view. Dubrovnik has a lot of sunshine, naturally, this is used for drying clothes.

In LiJiang, Yunnan of China, these residences have highly decorated window screens.

Further up the mountains of Yunnan, in a place now used to call Shangrila, hundreds of small houses cluttered together. All these houses have light colored slate tiles as roofing.

Near to the desert in Inner Mongolia, China, many people still live in tents which are called yurts. Some of these people, who may have ancestors related to Genghis Khan, are still nomads.

Undoubtedly, the above only features a small proportion of how the other 6 billion on this planet lives. I hope, some day, my travels can be extended to cover how some people lives in houses made of earth and cow dung, people living in boat shaped structures  etc. My present collection is, of course, limited by my travels.

Coming to think about it, no matter the shape or form of these houses, people still prefer their own beds and kitchens in their own homes rather  than those provided by modern hotels!