Aural Tableau

A private music lesson in the park surrounding the Temple of Heaven, in Beijing.  This was a really beautiful and inspiring public space- full of music, games, and group exercise.

Down to the River (via elevator)

Trolley cars on the elevator to load a pile of tourists (us!) into Yangtze river cruise boats in Chongqing.  Visibility is maybe half a mile- enough to take in one of the many new construction projects expanding this already gargantuan city, going up on the other side.

Magic Market

The night market.  Yangshuo, southern China.

Bonsai

Trees in the sea of clouds.  Mt. Huangshan, China.

(Not really very) Bokehlicious

Yes, it's a very shallow depth of field, but it ain't bokeh to write home about.

Daintily-etched characters on a sandstone wall, in southern China.

Haunches

As it says in the title.  Pig legs on the wall of a Chinese village.

Little Buddha

A carving from Baodingshan, in China.  I unfortunately can't remember which wall I found this little guy on, and there's not enough to reference in the background for a cross-check on the interwebs.  But judging by his blissfully devotional countenance, I think he is not, for example, from the section of the relief which depicts the "Hells of Excrement and Impaling."

Helping Hands

The thousand-armed Avalokitesvara, or Guanyin in Chinese, the mythological Bodhisattva of Compassion who requested and received 1,000 hands in order to save all sentient life.  Baodingshan, near Dazu, China.

Heavenly

Temple of Heaven, Beijing, another dubious site for a four-man game of frisbee.

All the World's a Stage

Performance of traditional Chinese theater, Xi'an.  Can't for the life of me remember the story (it was one of many), but I do remember that it was beautifully staged and that the accompanying dinner involved more varieties of dumpling than I thought possible.

Dichotomous

Juxtaposition in Shanghai; out with the old.

Dam.

In the lochs of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, China.  I seem to recall spending the night in this boat stairway.  Water goes up, water goes down.  Very. slowly.

The other half

Destitution, Xi'an, China- but it could be anywhere on Earth.  Its a good day to be thankful for what you have.

Occupy: Sedan Chair

Everyone loves an aggressively obvious visual metaphor, non?

Seriously though, I find the expression on this guy's face as he is being portaged up some very steep stairs to be pretty evocative.  Epic smugness.

Street(non)meats

There are rice pyramids in these bamboo leaves.  They looked so good (and so benign and un-intimidating relative to the average East Asian streetmeat), but they were just a bit too blandly sweet for me.  Muslim Quarter, Xi'an, China.

Pensive Piety

A congregant at the Great Mosque of Xi'an.

Through a Chinese Doorway, Three

A little slice of secret garden in heavily urban environs, Xi'an, Shaanxi Province.

Through a Chinese Doorway, Two

Back alley courtyard, Hong Village, Anhui Province.

Through a Chinese Doorway, One

Inside the Temple of Buddhist Virtue on Longevity Hill, the Summer Palace, Beijing.

Cryptid

Abstract statuary, somewhere in Hong Kong.