Sinking into the wall

Sinking into the wall, originally uploaded by p2wy.

This shot was near the end of a long day in Tongli, China. April and I had the notion to take a local bus out to one of the lake towns near Shanghai and it could have easily been disastrous.

Getting to the bus depot was not a problem at all. It was actually adjacent to the giant Shanghai sports stadium and taxi fares are absurdly cheap. But when we got there, it was chaotic. The depot was packed (as most places in Shanghai are) with people and there was only one person there apart from us that spoke a lick of English, and she couldn't really explain to me which bus to get on even after we bought our tickets (she said "get on the fourth" and we walked out to a parking lot full of buses). I took a wild guess and chose the fourth bus from the left, flashed the ticket to the driver and he nodded so we got on.

During the 90 minute ride it was evident that we might be on the wrong bus. There were three Russians on the bus (everyone else was Chinese) and they seemed to be headed to someplace other than Tongli, but Tongli was allegedly the first stop in a two stop ride. So when we got to the first stop almost all the bus got off as there was a public bathroom there (a miracle in China... even had a handicap stall with a proper toilet rather than a hole in the floor). However almost everyone else got back on the bus but I had a hunch we were at the right place. About 8 people including us didn't reboard the bus. We walked to the "tourist office" there and all we could tell from them was that we were at the location our ticket was for.

We took the little mini-tram into town (about a 2 mile trip) and there we saw that we were indeed in Tongli. It's an ancient town full of canals... very much a Venice but with pagodas instead of St Marks. I suppose it's normally overrun with Chinese tourists (it's on the shortlist for a spot on UNESCO's World Heritage Sites) but the day we were there it's was eerily devoid of tourists.

We spent the day walking all over town...and for the first time really had a feel for the life of the average Chinese person. The people were so much friendlier than in Shanghai... I had the feeling that Westerners normally don't visit. The town was full of texture and color and beautiful shapes. I shot color most of the day but by the time I took this it was near the end of a long day and I had put the red filter on my 100mm Tokina lens and was taking macros over unusual clovers and shrubs in a pagoda's garden.

We were able to make it back to the little bus stop in time for the bus back (actually a little bit early as there was no lodging in this little town and we didn't want to get stranded) to Shanghai. This was undoubtedly my favorite day of the trip.

More photos from Tongli...including the canals...