We escape from Shanghai opening windows, Breathing the road wind. So far we had visited Beijing, rich, Xian and Shanghai. We demanded another scale, A more walkable China. From now on it accompanied us echo, that would help us in local production tasks, I would act as a guide and even mediating in bank matters. Echo was a young China, with a awake and blessed by spontaneous joy. He solved any logistics problem with great ease and seemed to have more desire than us to travel the south of his country.
Our driver, Tui, It was the opposite. I barely spoke English although I would say that I barely spoke in any language. But it took us to the destinations that we were marking.
We demanded another scale, A more walkable China
We stop in the city of Suzhou, Stop the rhythm of highways and great avenues. Not there, There the tourist walks next to the water channels, o It looks out to the terraces to drink tea and eat chicken hands, A dish that drives the Chinese crazy. They know membrane and fat and me, at least, I thought a snack joke. But he was grace to see open restaurants serving local food.
In the Chinese classic gardens they maintain with care in a corner of Suzhou I was reconciling with this country. Despite the attendance of people, The flowers about the water distracted me from the Human Legion taking photos. There were small palace united by bridges or stones roads, With Chinese and window roofs from which the duckbath was seen.
The rain precipitated the visit and we returned to the road. There were still two entire days to get to Hongcun. We arrived at night, At that time when only the echo of dog barking is heard. To enter the city it is necessary to pay toll, But there ended the bad news.
The facades illuminated as in whispers, Without the neon stridency
We stay at a time tempered by El Tiempo, with the taste of good wine, wood and spaces, an inner courtyard and the feeling of being in a pasta China. We go out to look for new corners, no people, No noise and Hongcun exercised his spell from the first moment. The facades illuminated as in whispers, Without the neon stridency, returning the brightness of lanterns in the water. There are small lakes and channels where the city doubles and on the bridge that gives access to the town we decided to portray that night. I photograph Yeray's silhouette next to the bridge, With its stamp reflected in the lagoon. I ignore what the technical whim was or if there were perhaps there was any more esoteric phenomenon, But the truth is that Yeray's image disappeared from the photo and instead appeared only a flash. Your reflection in water, however, It looked sharp.
We had the illuminated night, The beauty of the people and the mystery. Hongcun appeared strongly.
The truth is that Yeray's image disappeared from the photo and instead appeared only one flash
In daylight, The villa brought us back to Pablo, who had managed to get here from Vietnam with the luggage loaded with plane hours, You wait and roads. With him and with echo it was easier to plant the tripod, find frames and walk light through the streets of Hongcun. This is a place was designed with the shape of an ox, But its appearance at ground is robust, rural, With large walls and small stories in the corners of almost a thousand years old. But the presence of water is the one that triggers magic, Because everything is portrayed twice.
The central plaza is liquid and the sidewalk surrounds a lagoon in which red fish swim, mistaken for the reflection of Chinese lanterns.. It is a round mirror where you look at the stone houses to see that they have barely been affected by the passage of time.
The central plaza is liquid and the sidewalk surrounds a lagoon in which red fish swim, mistaken for the reflection of Chinese lanterns.
Hongcun was full of beautiful arts who tried to paint their repeated beauty in the water. We spend there the hours, recording more slowly than usual because it was the people who gave us frames at every step without having to insist it.
Hongcun is a respite, A kind pause on the way, A way to refuse the anxiety of Chinese cities. This place tends to get away from the roads, has been walled in time. He had received us with cobbled streets and fired us one morning leaving a trace of aquatic images.
