China Day 2.... or the part where I kick Jon off of the computer!

Henri Cartier-Bresson is one of my favorite photographers. He is known for street/documentary photographer and his stuff is absolutely amazing. Today I learned that I am dirt on his shoes. There are many theories about taking street photographs and I tried to be a very proactive photographer. People don't really like having their picture taken! I was hard pressed to actually get anyone to look at the lens and give their approval and take a nice shot. There were some amazing shots at that. My favorite being a hotel employee blowing on a window of the hotel in quieter part of town! Priceless.... so I had to revert to shooting from the hip some more. There is nothing wrong with this, but you get a lot of out of focus pictures or shots of your jacket. I did get a few shots that I am proud of.

The morning was gorgeous. The smog that welcomed us was nowhere to be seen. It looked like the perfect fall morning. Jon and I had an awesome breakast at the hotel and got some coffee at Starbucks around the corner. Caramel Frappacino for me. Jon had a presentation for potential students. I thought that I would shoot it and maybe get some freelance work out of UC. There were about 15 students all wanting to learn about the prospects of Univ. of Cincinnati. I have to admit that Jon gave a great presentation and that if I were 18.... I might want to go to UC??!! There was this very sweet girl that reminded me of my friend Carrie Carlson. I decided to refer to her as Carrie Jr. the rest of the day. I cut out early and walked around the mall attached to our hotel. Many people found me rather interesting. I sorta like the attention. I made my way to the toy section in hopes of finding cool and unusual Chinese toys. Instead, I found your typical American toys with creative names. Transformers were called Metal Transforming robot. I also was shown how to play with many of the toys by over eager store clerks. Plus they would just point to things and start trying to explain what they did?? I was really impressed with their explanation of the bowling set!

After the mall, I decided to find my way to the Temple of Heaven. Everyone says it is amazing. Unfortunately, I have no idea what it looks like because I have a terrible sense of direction. I ended up at Tiananmen Square. There I was greeted by very enthusiastic "art" students that wanted to show me their work. I had to politely decline and walked around photographing people until my battery died.

Jon and I hooked up for dinner with people from his contact's office. We went to a very nice Cantonese restaurant. I think that I ate parts of a chicken that I never wanted to know about. I got a little tipsy on Chinese beer. Their beer is amazing. It is like nothing I have ever had and packs a punch. It is fizzy and doesn't taste like Western beer. Jon and I ended up at a Cigar/tea house and ended the night there.

Tomorrow we are going to the Great Wall. Jon flies to another part of China and I am flying solo. I hope all is well with you. Oh yeah.... I can't actually read this blog. The Chinese restrict the internet pretty seriously. So if anyone is responding or anything, I can't read them. But that doesn't mean stop.

Peace