Zhengyangmen in Beijing

On 3rd November 2008, the first day of our 3 days Beijing tour, we went to visit the most famous Tiananmen Square and its surrounding. Once we got off the subway train and walked to the ground level from Qianmen subway station, when we looked up, the first building caught our eyes was the Zhengyangmen Gate.

Zhengyangmen is a gate standing by the south end of Tiananmen Square. It was formerly the front gate of the Imperial City and built in 1419. It consists of a gate house and an archery tower. It is 42 meters high and the tallest among all gates in Beijing.

Seventeen Arch Bridge in YiHeYuan

On 5th November 2008, we spent the afternoon in the famous YiHeYuan in Beijing, China. In the old days, YiHeYuan was the summer palace, a private park, for the emperors and their families to enjoy life and relax. Now, it is open to the public. So, we walked into the summer palace to see and feel how the emperors spent their summer vacation long time ago. YiHeYuan is just unbelievably beautiful and gorgeous. The architecture and construction were done in a way that money was no object. It is simply amazing and breathtaking.

YiHeYuan was built around Kunming Lake. There is a small island on the lake. A bridge was built to cross over from inland to the island. The bridge is called Seventeen Arch Bridge. Apparently, it was named after the way it was constructed. We did count the number of arches under the bridge, no doubt, seventeen total. The bridge is just so beautiful from any angle to look at. While we were there around sunset, the light was so soft and the bridge showed us its beauty even more.

New Old Building in Qianmen

During our trip to Asia in 2008, we spent a few days in Beijing, China. On 3rd November 2008, we spent the morning in Qianmen. Qianmen has been the famous and busiest place in Beijing for businesses and shopping. There are many over 100 years old stores in Qianmen. Due to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Qianmen has been undergoing renovation, taking old buildings down and rebuilding just like before. The building on this picture has just been finished but it is still waiting for business to occupy.

Architecturally, this building is quite interesting, round on one end, rectanglar on the other end. The two ends are connected somehow with a bridge. There must be a reason why this building is designed like that. We think that it must be related to the type of business it is being conducted there. Anyway, we will keep our eyes open to find out more on this building and look forward to hearing the historical background behind it.

Orchid in Chapel Hill

I talked to one of our colleagues, Eric, the other days on photography, our common interest. We had very nice discussion on what photographic objects would be. Of course, different photographer has different point of view. I particularly interest in very small things based on my educational background. All of a sudden, I realize that I do not have many photographs of small and beautiful objects in the blog. After looking over our collections, here is one of them.

We were invited to Robin's house to take photos for her orchids on 14th May 2006. Using a Nikon Micro lens, we were able to take a photo on a close-up look of a orchid flower. The core part of the flower in the picture is about one centimeter diameter. We can see clearly the fine detail of that area. Sometimes, we are wondering why the orchid takes so much effort to make the flower so artistic and precise.