To China!
Thursday, December 23, 2010
I spent the last 5 days in Xiamen, visiting my relatives in Fujian, China, for the first time. Together with my aunt, parents and one cousin, we spent two days in the village and two in the city. Ironically, the ones in the village were far more interesting than those spent in the town.
Seeing as it was the perfect opportunity to take the kind of shots I'd be less able to take in Singapore, I tried playing around as much as I could with compositions of people who were less camera shy due to their lack of exposure to cameras themselves. As usual, I'd let the photos do the talking while I run the commentary.
Having arrived in the Village from the city late in the day, we only really headed out the next day to visit everyone. The ride from town took us three hours, and the barren but supposedly 4 star hotel we stayed in was anything but welcoming.
Until now I still can't figure out the large family tree over in the village, so I'd take wild stabs where I can, and leave the rest to the next trip. This photo was taken in a shop owned by our relative selling sundry goods.
This was taken in the village home, with everyone congregating at different times to see their relatives from abroad. All of them took days off to be with us, and that's saying something, given they work a 7 day work week.
While the older folk discussed some matters in Hokkien (which disturbingly felt like I was back home, where the dialect sounded so common and yet the whole environment was unfamiliar) my cousin and I walked around the village. Standing out clearly with our clothes and cameras, we attracted many stares, especially when I tried at times to take pictures of village folk.
The livestock here was huge, with this fat chicken seen here and ducks close to four times the size of what you see in ponds. If you didn't see it in the village itself, you'd think they were all genetically modified.
Teng Soon, the oldest of the whole family, talking to my dad in our ancestor's house a few houses away. His hair, all white, was nearly always covered with a cap. I think there's a chance I'll follow the way of my dad and him when I grow old...
My mom talks to Yijing in this photo, with me on the second storey of the same house, looking down. She was brought over to Singapore by my aunt at 8 years old so that she could study there and hopefully help pull my relatives out of the farms. She's now a year older, with a place nearly secured in a primary school in the west. She lives with my aunt while in Singapore, but she's busy as heck with her own business, and it kind of makes us all wonder if she's being parented in too detached a manner.
Here's that same boy in the first photo, with his mom and younger sister on the scooter. Scooters and bicycles were the primary mode of transport in the village, and everyone horns liberally as a warning of intention to overtake, or some other minor driver's notice. Highly irritating and noisy.
Same little sister, different composition.
Here's the baby brother of Yijing, taken while we were in a restaurant having lunch. All four meals we had at the village were 12+ course meals, with one dish coming quickly after the other as we were nearly always the only customers. We always occupied two large tables, and once the dish came, the five of us Singaporeans would quickly take what we wanted. This was because our relatives grow up with much stronger stomachs, and serving us or picking the food at the same time would only invite a very, very serious onset of diarrhoea. My dad himself experienced it when he let his guard down the last trip. I'm not sure if our relatives are aware of why we chiong for the food the way we do.
Testament to their strong stomachs could be seen when the little kids would take nearly anything and put it into their mouths, including those that dropped onto dubious surfaces. they'd play and eat sand, flowers and the like, too. Heh, I lost an apple bar to a little girl who wanted a bit. I hadn't taken a full bite before she came up to me, and then once I gave her one chunk, which she swallowed with my fingers in her mouth, I knew I had to give her the whole thing. My dad funnily compared the little kids to our kind back home, who grow up with the Pediasure, Enfagrow and omega 3 nonsense.
After the meal, we decided to do a bit of sightseeing, and headed out to a windfarm at the beach. In this picture are pipes drawing water from the sea (that is closest to taiwan from the whole of the PRC) to the farms inland.
Here's the inside of the wind turbine.
The sun was setting, but a fog or haze constantly hung over the land and it dulled the view somewhat.
Another little one, also taken in another restaurant with a 17 course meal in the villlage. My aunt paid for all the meals there, which were not as spectacular as the digits sound. Once more, we were the only customers in the hotel restaurant. The hotel in question was just one month old.
The next day, before we could head out, an aunt brought oranges from a nearby orange grove they owned. Expressing interest, she brought me there to have a looksee. Instead of being interested in the grove, though, I was more interested in the four puppies that tagged along wherever I went... before their mother came along and shooed them away. This one is the only white puppy, with the rest having a brown coat. It's name is Xiao Bai.
Chalking up a first; riding a bike.
My dad used to bike when he was younger, before he sustained his foot injury during a ride from Pasir Laba camp to meet his girlfriend in Yio Chu Kang. He was just as excited as I was to get on a bike (again) and took my mom for a ride to the beach with the rest of us.
Sitting pillion on a bike myself, I turned around and snapped a photograph that my dad would probably like too.
Here's my cousin on a scooter she rode pillion on to the beach, and beside her is my aunt who drove it for her.
One of two family photos I took, with the rest taken by my aunt's sharp and powerful S95 Canon digital camera. The same model retailed in Xiamen city for twice the price. It's all about the kind of goods people are looking to buy, I guess. Not every single person is in this photo, though. And in retrospect, I should have just asked my aunts to move into the shade rather than compromise the whole setting. In the background is the house that a few of them live in.
When we got back to the city, we checked in to the 5 star Sheraton hotel, where I again got a room to myself, this time much, much more welcoming than the hotel in the village. I'd talk about it more in the next post.
We spent some time visiting Gulangyu, a small little island at the bottom of Xiamen. In colonial times, this small island was occupied by 13 different nations who exacted small bits of China during successive wars. As a part of concessions that China was made to part with, they more or less owned the island with luxurious houses and consulates. All of them were restored or rebuilt by China in recent times, save the Japanese one. However, the state of disrepair that it was in was actually pretty interesting...
We arrived at a house museum with our guide, (she was asking for just 4 SGD equivalent, total for our 2 hour tour, and she was a registered tour guide, at that) one that once belonged to a European family. It was chock full of old artefacts, from bank notes to stereophones, maps to beds, television sets to old European paintings. It seemed like they had insufficient space to display all of them, and through the tour of the house, I was begging inside to buy some of them, like those really old, authentic cameras. Seen this picture is the toilet, with the title above saying "foreign babes restroom" (yes, there was a nice lot of evidence of Engrish) and the picture showing an interesting interaction of naked ladies...
at the pier of the island, accessible only by ferry, was a small fishing trawler undergoing repairs. We passed it by quite a bit while on a small buggy ride, but it was just itching to be photographed. While doing so, my cousin and I got accosted by those sham monks who tried to hard sell us with their beads. My constant refusal of the darned beads earned me a "sha hai zi".
posted by joseph at 10:09 AM
Thursday, December 23, 2010
I've got three posts queued up in my head, and this one with all the pictures goes first.
I spent the last 5 days in Xiamen, visiting my relatives in Fujian, China, for the first time. Together with my aunt, parents and one cousin, we spent two days in the village and two in the city. Ironically, the ones in the village were far more interesting than those spent in the town.
Seeing as it was the perfect opportunity to take the kind of shots I'd be less able to take in Singapore, I tried playing around as much as I could with compositions of people who were less camera shy due to their lack of exposure to cameras themselves. As usual, I'd let the photos do the talking while I run the commentary.
Having arrived in the Village from the city late in the day, we only really headed out the next day to visit everyone. The ride from town took us three hours, and the barren but supposedly 4 star hotel we stayed in was anything but welcoming.
Until now I still can't figure out the large family tree over in the village, so I'd take wild stabs where I can, and leave the rest to the next trip. This photo was taken in a shop owned by our relative selling sundry goods.
This was taken in the village home, with everyone congregating at different times to see their relatives from abroad. All of them took days off to be with us, and that's saying something, given they work a 7 day work week.
While the older folk discussed some matters in Hokkien (which disturbingly felt like I was back home, where the dialect sounded so common and yet the whole environment was unfamiliar) my cousin and I walked around the village. Standing out clearly with our clothes and cameras, we attracted many stares, especially when I tried at times to take pictures of village folk.
The livestock here was huge, with this fat chicken seen here and ducks close to four times the size of what you see in ponds. If you didn't see it in the village itself, you'd think they were all genetically modified.
Teng Soon, the oldest of the whole family, talking to my dad in our ancestor's house a few houses away. His hair, all white, was nearly always covered with a cap. I think there's a chance I'll follow the way of my dad and him when I grow old...
My mom talks to Yijing in this photo, with me on the second storey of the same house, looking down. She was brought over to Singapore by my aunt at 8 years old so that she could study there and hopefully help pull my relatives out of the farms. She's now a year older, with a place nearly secured in a primary school in the west. She lives with my aunt while in Singapore, but she's busy as heck with her own business, and it kind of makes us all wonder if she's being parented in too detached a manner.
Here's that same boy in the first photo, with his mom and younger sister on the scooter. Scooters and bicycles were the primary mode of transport in the village, and everyone horns liberally as a warning of intention to overtake, or some other minor driver's notice. Highly irritating and noisy.
Same little sister, different composition.
Here's the baby brother of Yijing, taken while we were in a restaurant having lunch. All four meals we had at the village were 12+ course meals, with one dish coming quickly after the other as we were nearly always the only customers. We always occupied two large tables, and once the dish came, the five of us Singaporeans would quickly take what we wanted. This was because our relatives grow up with much stronger stomachs, and serving us or picking the food at the same time would only invite a very, very serious onset of diarrhoea. My dad himself experienced it when he let his guard down the last trip. I'm not sure if our relatives are aware of why we chiong for the food the way we do.
Testament to their strong stomachs could be seen when the little kids would take nearly anything and put it into their mouths, including those that dropped onto dubious surfaces. they'd play and eat sand, flowers and the like, too. Heh, I lost an apple bar to a little girl who wanted a bit. I hadn't taken a full bite before she came up to me, and then once I gave her one chunk, which she swallowed with my fingers in her mouth, I knew I had to give her the whole thing. My dad funnily compared the little kids to our kind back home, who grow up with the Pediasure, Enfagrow and omega 3 nonsense.
After the meal, we decided to do a bit of sightseeing, and headed out to a windfarm at the beach. In this picture are pipes drawing water from the sea (that is closest to taiwan from the whole of the PRC) to the farms inland.
Here's the inside of the wind turbine.
The sun was setting, but a fog or haze constantly hung over the land and it dulled the view somewhat.
Another little one, also taken in another restaurant with a 17 course meal in the villlage. My aunt paid for all the meals there, which were not as spectacular as the digits sound. Once more, we were the only customers in the hotel restaurant. The hotel in question was just one month old.
The next day, before we could head out, an aunt brought oranges from a nearby orange grove they owned. Expressing interest, she brought me there to have a looksee. Instead of being interested in the grove, though, I was more interested in the four puppies that tagged along wherever I went... before their mother came along and shooed them away. This one is the only white puppy, with the rest having a brown coat. It's name is Xiao Bai.
Chalking up a first; riding a bike.
My dad used to bike when he was younger, before he sustained his foot injury during a ride from Pasir Laba camp to meet his girlfriend in Yio Chu Kang. He was just as excited as I was to get on a bike (again) and took my mom for a ride to the beach with the rest of us.
Sitting pillion on a bike myself, I turned around and snapped a photograph that my dad would probably like too.
Here's my cousin on a scooter she rode pillion on to the beach, and beside her is my aunt who drove it for her.
One of two family photos I took, with the rest taken by my aunt's sharp and powerful S95 Canon digital camera. The same model retailed in Xiamen city for twice the price. It's all about the kind of goods people are looking to buy, I guess. Not every single person is in this photo, though. And in retrospect, I should have just asked my aunts to move into the shade rather than compromise the whole setting. In the background is the house that a few of them live in.
When we got back to the city, we checked in to the 5 star Sheraton hotel, where I again got a room to myself, this time much, much more welcoming than the hotel in the village. I'd talk about it more in the next post.
We spent some time visiting Gulangyu, a small little island at the bottom of Xiamen. In colonial times, this small island was occupied by 13 different nations who exacted small bits of China during successive wars. As a part of concessions that China was made to part with, they more or less owned the island with luxurious houses and consulates. All of them were restored or rebuilt by China in recent times, save the Japanese one. However, the state of disrepair that it was in was actually pretty interesting...
We arrived at a house museum with our guide, (she was asking for just 4 SGD equivalent, total for our 2 hour tour, and she was a registered tour guide, at that) one that once belonged to a European family. It was chock full of old artefacts, from bank notes to stereophones, maps to beds, television sets to old European paintings. It seemed like they had insufficient space to display all of them, and through the tour of the house, I was begging inside to buy some of them, like those really old, authentic cameras. Seen this picture is the toilet, with the title above saying "foreign babes restroom" (yes, there was a nice lot of evidence of Engrish) and the picture showing an interesting interaction of naked ladies...
at the pier of the island, accessible only by ferry, was a small fishing trawler undergoing repairs. We passed it by quite a bit while on a small buggy ride, but it was just itching to be photographed. While doing so, my cousin and I got accosted by those sham monks who tried to hard sell us with their beads. My constant refusal of the darned beads earned me a "sha hai zi".
Labels: holidays, interesting, photography, thoughts
posted by joseph at 10:09 AM