After my fun afternoon playing dressing up in the park with Mrs. Stevo, I decided to revisit the locale. Mrs. Stevo acted as make-up artist/assistant, wearing a Queen Elizabeth-type hat (she is fond of hats), her colleague was the model. No, it’s not a perfect shot. There’s a few technical details that irk me, but overall it’s not bad. Shooting in a public space, with many spectators, and trying to keep track of a model, gear, and setting flashes is not an easy task.

I’m heading into a lovely 8-day national holiday. It will be a photographyfest. Stay tuned.

I had the chance to stay in a 5-Star Hotel last week. There’s nothing like being in the lap of luxury. As I was watching CNN (a rarity in China) I jotted down the following list of difference between staying in 5-Star hotels and hostels.

1. Taxi drivers often know how to get to 5-Star Hotels.
2. Your luggage and belongings are more secure in five star hotels than they are in the battered locker of a hostel.
3. You don’t have to pay a deposit for towels in a 5-Star Hotel.
4. At 5-Star Hotels you don’t have to share your room with 3, 5, 7 or 11 strangers.
5. In a 5-Star Hotel you, more often than not, are the only person having sex in your room.
6. You don’t have to worry about being awakened between 3 am and 8 am by drunken roommates at a 5-Star Hotel.
7. A night in a 5-Star Hotel doesn’t include wearing earplugs.
8. The free breakfast at a 5-Star Hotel is more than cold cereal and instant coffee.
9. The bathrooms at a 5-Star Hotel are often larger than hostel rooms in Hong Kong.
10. The staff at a 5-Star Hotel are professional, deferential, and helpful; not travelers working odd shifts to pay for their own rooms.
11. The attire of other guests at a 5-Star hotel doesn’t usually include Che Guevara T-Shirts. Also, dreadlocks are rarely seen in the hotel’s rooms or halls.
12. Most 5-Star Hotels do not offer easy ways to prepare Ramen Noodles.
13. The showers in a 5-Star Hotel can be used without fear or flip-flops.
14. A bell boy will help carry your bags at a 5-Star Hotel, not vaguely point down a hallway.
15. The guests at a 5-Star Hotel are often cold and care little about you or your journeys. They usually won’t offer advice or information on the city you are visiting.
16. The atmosphere in the bars of 5-Star Hotels are akin to a slow elevator ride with Celine Dion and alcohol. The same cannot be said for hostels.
17. Outside the gift shop, there are rarely books and magazines at a 5-Star Hotel to help you spend a quiet (and free) afternoon.
18. The guests at a 5-Star Hotel will know little about a city’s bus system or how to effectively use it.
19. There is neither a comfy common area or DVD room in a 5-Star Hotel.
20. You’re hard pressed to find a washing machine in a 5-Star Hotel.
21. There isn’t a bulletin board full of useful information at a 5-Star Hotel.
22. Total strangers you meet at a 5-Star Hotel won’t become life-long friends.
23. Five star hotels feel like your grandmother’s parlor, Hostel’s feel like your best friends house.

Veteran travelers: Feel free to chime in with your own observations.

Creative Common photo credit: thisisbossi

On the many corridors under the Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defense, formerly the Lei Yue Fort. The British built the fort in the late 19th century to protect the eastern approach, the Lei Yue Mun Pass to Victoria Harbour, from the French and Russian navies. (Ironically, the fortification look incredibly similar the Chinese Shajiao Fort in Humen China – that the British stormed during the first Opium War.)

The centerpiece of the fort is the redoubt that was dug deep into a hillside. The corridors and storerooms, containing ammunition and gunpowder, were covered with earth, making the fort hard to spot. A trench around the area, with stone caponiers, protected the fort if invaders found their way to land.

The fort was never used in the way it was intended. A shot was never fired at Russian or French ships. During the Battle of Hong Kong, Lei Yue Fort was used by British forces in an attempt to unsuccessfully repel the Japanese assault of Hong Kong Island. Evidence of the fighting is still visible.

After the Battle of Hong Kong and the Second World War the British used the fort as a training ground until it was vacated in 1987. Hong Kong government agencies decided to give Lei Yue Fort a second lease on life and created the Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence in 1993.

A permanent exhibit covering 600 years of military defence in the Pearl River Delta is on display in the underground rooms that once held thousand of artillery shells and tonnes of gunpowder. A historic trail leads visitors through the batteries, a ruined settlement (destroyed during the Battle of Hong Kong), and the Brennan Torpedo station carved into the rock at the base of the fort.

The Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defense is a short walk from the Island Line’s Shau Kei Wan MTR station.

The statue at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial

By: Graham Woodring

Come the day of departure, my alarm didn’t so much wake me up at 5 AM as let me know that it was time to stop lying around.  As I stumbled out into the kitchen to put the kettle on, I noticed an odd sound.  Not paying it much heed, I nearly fell in to the shower and washed myself awake.  After pulling on my clothes and being slightly more awake, I couldn’t help but wonder what the heck was that incessant noise?

When I returned to the kitchen to retrieve my tea, I got my answer: there was a near-torrential downpour.  Well, that’s certainly annoying, especially since I don’t own nor want to use an umbrella.  Needless to say, in the 10 minutes it took us to walk to a taxi I got completely drenched.  That’s the price I pay for refusing to carry an umbrella.  We hopped in the cab and it sped us off to the airport.  We had no further weather-related issues and arrived just a short plane ride later in beautiful, sunny, warm Nanjing.

Have you ever tried navigating a bus route when there is no map and the stop announcements are all in a foreign language?  It’s hard.  Really hard.  On the bus ride from the airport we ended up completely missing our stop and were deposited on the exact opposite end of the city from where we wanted to be.  Andrew left us at this point to catch a cab to meet with his friend, whom he was staying with for the weekend, and we found our own cab to take us to our hostel.

Well wouldn’t you know it?  It seems that petty crime can happen to anyone anywhere.  We dropped our stuff off at the hostel and took a quick 30-minute stroll around the area to get our bearings, after which we retired to have some lunch.  By the time we were done eating I realized that my camera had been stolen.  In the first friggin’ 30 minutes of being in this new city and I already had my camera lifted.  What a pain in the ass.  Fortunately it will be covered; thank you renter’s insurance.

The first day we didn’t do much exploring.  I had to get a police report for my stolen camera and then we stuck around the Fuzi Miao area.  The place seems to be the main tourist place in Nanjing.  There are many, many restaurants and shops and hawkers.  Also, you can find a Confucius temple and a massive golden tree, which I thought was pretty cool.  On the flip side, you can also find what I think is possibly the most annoying and/or inane thing in China.  The clappers.  Lord, the clappers.  I have nightmares about these people.  Sorry, but I couldn’t bring myself to take a picture of them.  It’s just too stupid.  These people are shop employees and their only job is to stand on the street and clap.  That’s it.  They don’t yell or try to rope people into the store or anything.  They just clap.  That’s all they ever do.  Just clap, clap, clap!  My hatred for this job could only be matched by how I imagine these people feel about their dead-end job and dead-end lives.  It gets my blood pumping just thinking about them.  The hate, it’s overwhelming sometimes.

Purple Mountain, near Nanjing China

We spent one day hiking to the top of Purple Mountain.  Now, this mountain is home to both Ming dynasty tombs and Sun Yat-Sen’s mausoleum.  There is some serious sightseeing potential there.  But much to my chagrin, we did neither.  My asthma was seriously acting up that day, so by the time we finally climbed to the top, I thought my head was going to explode or I would pass out.  Fortunately, neither happened.  On the way down we took the chair lift, which I think provided better views than the top of the mountain did.  By the time we were at the bottom I was so exhausted and worn down from my respiratory issues that I didn’t have the energy to protest not going to see the tombs or the mausoleum.  I really regret that, as I am told it is one of the big things to see in Nanjing.  Who knows when I’ll come back?  The dusty trail won’t get any shorter if I am revisiting places.

Zhonghua Gate, Nanjing China

I snuck off on my own at one point to check out the Zhonghua gate.  It was actually a lot more impressive than I imagined.  There are three courtyards; each said to be able to hold 1000 men and walls are all quite high.  You don’t always have high expectations when going to see a wall or a gate (unless it’s the Great Wall, of course) so I was pleasantly surprised.  And best of all, I filled my quota for having my picture taken with some Chinese.  I think Chengdu is the only city I’ve been to that I haven’t had my picture taken.  I guess I’ll have to go back there someday and correct that.

The Nanjing Massacre Memorial was the major thing I had come to the former capital to see.  Having read The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang, I knew much of the story already but I was not prepared for what I was presented with.  The amount of information is staggering and the level of professionalism and respect is unparalleled in China.  Given some of the other places I have been to in China, I was not expecting it to be so well done.  But in fact it was incredible.  The entire timeline of the event is given in encyclopedic detail, starting from the turn of the 20th century all the way up to present times.  The mountain of information reinforces the magnitude of the Japanese occupation of Nanjing and the atrocities they enacted on the population.  It is a moving experience, to say the least.

The Massacre Memorial is the must see site of Nanjing.  Like many similar events that have occurred in the bloody history of our world, we must try to learn from our mistakes through reflection and examination.  Unfortunately, even today there are still places in the world that harbor the hatred and frustration that breeds these evil acts.  Hopefully someday, with memorials like this one, we can come closer to comprehending the horrible toll these acts take on the victims.  History and culture destroyed, lives lost, families scattered to the wind, women subjugated and raped.  I fear that the cycle of death and destruction will never truly end, but I believe that this memorial is a huge step towards brining awareness to such issues and helping us understand the motivations that lead entire armies to truly demonic acts.

A perfect example of the post-industrial Chinese school of architecture can be found at the Martyr’s Memorial.  Everything is huge and made of concrete.  To me it really epitomizes the Chinese desire for everything to be ostentatious and grandiose exemplified in the past 30 years or so.  The sprawling campus is home to many different things, from huge monuments and statues, to a small amusement park, to an area devoted into to stone culture, to–my personal favorite–the kiosk of loyal souls.  I mean c’mon, a kiosk?  Sure it’s probably just a poor translation into English, but that’s still a hilarious name.  Also, you can find the blueprint for pretty much any boy band album cover carved in stone.  How it made its way to China, I have no idea.

Overall, my weekend visiting Nanjing was well spent.  Yes, I did get my camera stolen.  And yes, I did encounter the profession I hate the most in this world.  But I did get to see a lot of great things.  I got the see the Massacre Memorial, which should be seen by anyone traveling in Nanjing, and I got my picture taken with some more random Chinese.  From the people, to the history, to the architecture, to the hustle and bustle of Fuzi Miao, so far on my travels Nanjing is one of my favorite cities in China.

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After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Graham Woodring decided to see a part of the world he’d always dreamed of: Asia. In February 2009, He moved to Xi’an, China to live and work as an English language teacher at one of the top five foreign language universities in the country. Visit Graham’s Blog:  An American in the Far East.

ESL Teachers and a student take part in a basketball game as part of a school charity event in Shenzhen, China.

When I worked for a newspaper I loved shooting high school sports. The weather this day didn’t agree with me. This image looked much better before the JPG conversion. And, I’m way out of practice.  Michael at Expatriate Games has a great description of basketball in China (the nation is crazy for it). I recommend reading it.

The two weeks of sunshine were a tease. I spent most of the weekend inside thanks to torrential downpours. June 1 signals the start of the Pacific typhoon season. A school day canceled because of a typhoon is always welcome. Five weeks and counting…

For the absent Mrs. Stevo. Only a few more weeks…

I was finally able to buy some flowers to shoot. Strobist info: This was done with an “O” flash on-camera, and a YN460 behind, bouncing off a white wall.  Triggered with Phottix Tetra wireless triggers.