The Best of Phoenix City

(October 1st) Today started with an early start before the sun rose. The plan was to head outside of Pheonix City to visit a historical site for a couple of hours. You may not know this, but China actually has two Great Walls. The most famous one is the Northern Great Wall, built mainly to separate the Chinese empire from the Mongols. The Southern Great Wall is less known, but was also built by the Ming dynasty on its border. Here it was to keep the Ming kingdom separate from the Miao kingdom. Today I had the chance to see this wall. We got there just as it was starting to open (best for the light) and the locals were walking in, often from several miles away. They were coming to sell food, souvenirs, etc. They usually carried all this on their backs as they walked for miles. I rarely photograph people, but I had to take a picture of this young girl from whom we bought flower wreaths that she was making. She explained that because of the starting holiday the children were off from school and were helping the family.

One of the great things about the Southern Great Wall is that it is so far from everything that there aren't many people there - especially at 8 in the morning. There is a good amount of scenery around it as well, so I was pleased with some of the shots I took. Given the ageless nature of the subject and the weather, I opted for a black and white take on the wall.

Now the plan was to head back to Fenghuang after the wall, but plans don't always hold up. We had taken a taxi on the way out, but out here there aren't any taxis. So after talking to one of the locals, we struck a deal (deals were made for so much of my trip - hotel rates, buses, guides, etc.). The man would get us transportation on a bus back to town, but we would also visit another local attraction - a series of magnificent waterfalls. We took a motorbike-like like vehicle that had a passenger body build onto it and were handed off at various junctures to different people. We finally got to the waterfall area and no one was around. So we started to walk what looked like the path in. At first it was through fields like these rice fields that had been harvested and dried already.

The next portion was through fields that were strewn with trash and the 'river' was barely a trickle. We thought we had made a huge mistake. Luckily after a mile and a half it improved and we saw a few small waterfalls. In China there is nothing like safety protection. We walked straight down the side of a canyon cliff on a wobbly stair where the steps were made of 2 pieces of wood maybe two inches thick. While walking down this, you occasionally ran into people going the other direction and had to squeeze by on the narrow stairs. It was quite an experience. At the end of this, we were treated a view of the valley that opened up in front of us. After a hefty walk back and another adventure of transportation - this time on a bus in the heat that was stopped in a small town for farming concerns, we made it back to Fenghuang for a very late lunch.

With the late day sun, it was time to see some more of the town. I was captivated by the roofs and there geometry. I took many shots of just the eaves alone, but I think I like best the shots that work in the town as well.