Fuddland

Just outside Dīng Shān (丁山) is a series of caves open to the public, the largest of which is Zhānggōng Dòng (张公洞), set in a small park with the usual offerings of ponds, rocks and winding pathways.

The caves would be a lovely place to spend some time exploring, admiring the stalactites and listening to the drip-drip-drip of water echoing around the chambers as you ascend — you actually climb a hill, but from the inside — except they’ve been ruined [in my opinion] by obtrusive, unsubtle lighting, bathing everything in either yellow strip lighting running along the celing, or the same bright green spotlights that they’ve lit the trees with in every city I’ve visited here. [The fact that everything was well-lit made a mockery of the torch I’d hired at the cave entrance.] Fake cement columns have been dotted here and there for no good reason, and stairs have either been added or simply carved out of the existing rock.

I might still have been able to enjoy the caves despite these things, if not for the fact that I continually felt the urge to keep moving due to the other visitors deciding it was more fun to ignore the natural sights and instead yell, “Hello!” at me at every given opportunity. Now I’m all for being friendly, but when the same group of people follow me around, shouting and asking to take my photo, I tend to get a bit annoyed, so I chose to sod foreign relations and curtly refuse their requests. My apologies if this has set the Anglo-Sino relationship back at all.

Walking back some of the way to Dīng Shān, I saw a lot of independent pottery works: each house seemed to have its own small-scale clay-pit in the back garden, where they’re been digging out the clay for years, bringing it back to their personal kiln and working and firing it into the various types of pots that lined the front of the house. Most of them also had hundreds of bonsai trees in the garden — I couldn’t tell if they were for sale or simply decorative — as well as small watermelon plantations [as in, small plantations, I’m sure the watermelons were on their way to being watermelon-sized], or whatever the correct term for an area growing grapes is [a grapery?].

#1

mrtn | 2006 / 10 / 05 – 19:23

not sure how we got from watermelon to grapes, but surely a place where grapes are grown is a vineyard, even in china? (if you’re speaking english of course…)

#2

Sarai | 2006 / 10 / 05 – 19:37

If the locals are going to make you feel like a carnival exhibit, you might as well take advantage of the situation and make them pay to have their photo taken with you. You could earn money for your travels and also teach them a lesson about how glorious Capitalism is. (And yes, this might make you feel a tad cheap, but then, everyone has to earn a buck — or whatever they call it over there. And these people don’t know you and will never see you again, so it’s all good.)

#3

David | 2006 / 10 / 05 – 19:59

Re #1: Oops, that sentence wasn’t too clear was it — I meant some people had watermelons growing, some had grapes. And I’d somehow convinced myself that a vineyard grows grapes specifically for the purpose of making wine [vin], and that there was some alternative word for a grapes-for-eating growing place. I kind of like grapery though. ;)

Re #2: Sadly the money I’d earn from them isn’t worth the time it would take me to convince them to part with it! :P

#4

mrtn | 2006 / 10 / 05 – 20:55

re #3: yeah, i considered that possibility. collins has: “a plantation of grapevines, esp where wine grapes are produced.” so by implication, also for where non-wine grapes are produced.

you’ve also got vinery.

#5

felicity | 2006 / 10 / 06 – 01:12

the caves look interesting to say the least, especially the photo of the draped lighting. is the lighting overdone for safety reasons? or maybe they’re going for a Las Vegas style illumination?

#6

Dina | 2006 / 10 / 06 – 14:48

Amazing, David. Your perspective as a photographer makes the subject matter shine, as always.

It looks an interesting place to visit. I could do without the cave bug, though. I’m not big on cave crickets. We have ‘em here.

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