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New Website, New Blog, but the Old Blog Archive remains: September 28, 2023

After many years of wanting a real website, this month I finally have a website designed by the very knowledgeable Rey Rey Rodriguez ( TheMindOfReyRey ). My old blog,  Vacation-Travel-Adventure  continues with the same address but it is located in the "Archives" tab on my new website  https://www.ceciliaclark.com/ . The new blog which is a continuation but with much better resolution for 4K screens, it is now at  https://www.ceciliaclark.com/blog .

The "Ancient" City of Zhenyuan, China: October 18-19, 2019


Zhenyuan, in the eastern part of Guizhou province is a Miao city. We stayed in the old town area which meant that we had to leave our bus in a parking lot and board a Zhenyuan tourist bus that dropped us at the hotel. The streets are narrow, parking doesn't really exist, so traffic is limited.


We visited the Zhong Yuan Temple for a view of the city which is only 1.2 square miles in size. It's a very walkable city.

Zhenyuan
The city is concentrated between mountains and along the river. Every square inch of buildable land is built out.

Zhong Yuan Temple

Pagoda on Pedestrian bridge and a temple on the top of the mountain 
The city is charming by day, but dazzling at night when the entire city is lit. It was a beautiful, electric light cityscape.








This alleyway was near the hotel we stayed in. The lanterns are red creating a totally red atmosphere kind of like being in a darkroom. Two models were there with a photographer/videographer making "art" they told me. I was there before them with my tripod hoping to capture movement of people as they walked through the alley. The models using their cellphones took photos of me so I motioned for them to walk toward me. This is a compilation of three slow photos. I converted it to black and white because it was really too red.


The next morning we were up early to walk to a temple located on the top of a mountain. Unfortunately there was a new gate, locked, at the bottom of the mountain. The gate didn't open until after sunrise. After an early breakfast, Dan and I walked around the city looking for nice fog photos.




On the far side of the river we were greeted with a Tai Chi master first teaching a student and then performing his morning exercise. The master's performance lasted about 35 minutes. There was music. It was beautiful; he was beautiful. I've never before seen Tai Chi at this level of expertise. Just watching him and listening to his music, my stress level dropped.




Signs in front of the "Coffee Bar"
After hours of morning photography I decided to stop at the Coffee Bar for a cup of real coffee. We waited for the bar to open at 10:00 am. When a young woman raised the metal doors, I asked for a cup of coffee. She showed me a menu with all selections in Chinese characters. I said coffee. She didn't seem to understand. Finally, I gave up. While there are lots of signs for coffee and even "coffee" shops, the word coffee doesn't seem to be a universal word. The signs seem more like something put up because it's trendy and not because there is coffee. We even stayed in a hotel that had a "coffee" shop, but didn't serve coffee.

Our final overnight was in Guiyang the provincial capitol of Guizhou province. It was supposed to take about two hours by bus to get there. Unfortunately, our bus began to overheat and kept needing to rest and cool down. Instead of two hours, it took us about seven hours. Fortunately, it was our last night and we didn't miss any photo opportunities.

Early the next morning (Oct 20), we all went to the airport for our flights out of Guiyang.

It was a good photo trip even with all the rain and clouds along the way. The food was wonderful. Our tour leader, William Yu, his local assistants, and the other photographers were all very easy to be with. A success.

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