Di Tan Gong Yuan

After visiting the "Temple of Heaven" park (Tian Tan gong yuan) two weeks ago, today we went to the "Temple of Earth" park (Di Tan gong yuan) to have a look. Entrance was a staggering 2 Yuan (Eur 0,20).


Beautiful fresh spring colors everywhere

My girlfriend had just bought a new camera, and constantly takes photos 'for practice', she says :)

rose bud

rose bud

rose bud

Adapted photo of the bark of a tree

lanterns

A bicycle in the park


While we were sitting down at a street barbecue restaurant, waiting for our chicken wings and lamb skewers, we met a little girl who was also interested in photography. She could barely lift the big camera, but she snatched it from our hands and started shooting away.

Street barbecue; the best!

Relaxing time in Hunan

...As I wrote before, good times in China are all about good food. We have visited most of the relatives by now, and the smoke clouds from the fireworks have just about cleared. Now it is time for some relaxing.

This photo was taken behind the house. There is a hill and the forest starts there. We built a fire and brought a bottle of rice wine and had ourselves a little barbecue. What I am eating is dried and smoked pig's ear, then roasted over the fire we built. A little chewy but very nice.

The next day Chen Yi's brother and cousins built a 'proper' barbecue in the kitchen (the parents both weren't home...) We had skewers with chicken and pork, some vegetables and everything dipped in a firey hot chili sauce.

The barbecue was made from bricks and chicken wire

Yesterday more relatives came to visit (*uch*) Anyways, these two hippie kids found some plastic sunflowers and we were all happy because it took their minds of the bag of fireworks they had brought.

Inside more eating and drinking. Two of the relatives are policemen. I couldn't believe my eyes when they started drinking rice wine with us; one of them was on duty. I couldn't resist taking photos... The large tea pot on the right is filled with rice wine (20%-30%) and goes around the table. After lunch he went back to work. Mind you that it's a very small town here and not much to do

This is the view from the back of the house. There is a sort of gorge with rice paddies and forest. Up the mountains are more small villages with relatives

I went for a walk on my own and found this beautiful waterfalls, after a 1-hour hike up the mountain (1 second exposure shot)