I'm feeling pretty tired and absent-minded today, so I'm not really in the mood to give a long explanation of the photography tour I had yesterday. I'm posting pictures with brief descriptions instead. Sorry for the convenience. :)
Our first stop was Taoranting Park, where we saw people dancing, playing instruments, exercising and just enjoying the sunny weather.
This was one photo I entered into the competition. I had one that was better, with the Daddy looking down at the girl, but there were distracting people in the background, and I couldn't get him to look down again.
This man was one of four or five men playing with this rhythmic instruments. The bang together, and mostly sound like noise, but when several are played together it sounds nice. I also entered this photo in the competition.
It was pretty hot, which causes pretty Chinese girls to pull out all the stops to block the sun.
At the end of our park visit, we met at a tea house to have some very very strong tea. P.A. and Celine are the two people in the background.
And just for fun, I got Annie to take a photo of me in front of the lilies.
Our next stop was this temple-turned-museum. Unfortunately the organizers of the competition must not have realized how uninteresting it can be to take photos without people. I didn't take many photos at the temple for that reason.
Lunch was the next stop. We had a traditional Uyghur meal. I don't know much about the Uyghur culture, but suffice it to say that Uyghur is an Asian race of people who primarily live in Southwest China. According to the packet we received yesterday, they are Muslim. Please note how much food was left on the Lazy Susan in the picture. This was after the meal, and probably half of the dishes that were served have been cleared.
Lunch was accompanied by a traditional dance, which was pretty!
Then they came out into the audience and asked us to come try! You know I couldn't resist. It was pretty different from the Mountcastle School of Dance.
Thanks to Annie, by the way, for taking photos without being asked!
Our next stop was the Diabolo Museum. The diabolo is the hourglass-shaped "toy" the women are holding. It's suspended on the string, and as it slides up and down, it spins. The spinning causes a whistling noise, which varies greatly depending on the type of diabolo.
After going in the museum, which wasn't that impressive, we came outside to play with them ourselves! I wasn't too bad, but I didn't get to try the cool tricks like Annie. The diabolos come in a wide range of sizes, from golf-ball size to beach-umbrella size (not an exaggeration, Annie couldn't pick it up).
Next to the Diabolo Museum was an antique museum, and surrounding that is an antique market. Although, it appears that not everything at the antique market was antique. In fact, this whole row was for stands that make bracelets and necklaces and other things in front of you at your request. That's like the opposite of antique.
But they seemed to know what they were doing, and created some beautiful works. This was a submission.
And just for fun, here's a cutie vendor! I submitted her in the contest for her selling appeal. Nothing sells like cute. :)
That was the end of the tour. The top prize is 10,000 Yuan, or around $1,500. I don't expect to get anywhere near that, but it was a pretty good day, anyway. I was exhausted, and annoyed by our hour-long attempt to catch a cab back home at rush hour when they dropped us off at the meeting spot. After being so unsuccessful we went to a nearby food court and grabbed some food--I had curry beef, which I was not happy with at all. Then we went back outside, finally got a cab and went home, where I did nothing for the rest of the evening.
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