Chinese Garden

Gardens in China tend to be a lot more colorful then their Japanese counterparts. On the other hand, they still employ a high quality of thought in their careful design. This garden was probably the only "authentic" Chinese garden I visited while in China. Unfortunately, almost all the extensive landscape construction done today over there lacks any depth of design and tends to serve as just a "pretty" facade.
Overall, I was really glad to actually visit this garden since it allowed me to see some of the better aspects of authentic Chinese design.

Massage trail

This really cool stone walkway was a little further down the mountain from the waterfall picture I posted earlier. I was told that it is meant to massage your feet as you walk along the path. Well as it turns out,they were correct...however, there is one side where the stones are further apart from one another and then it just starts to hurt your feet. I guess I just need to work more on my zen meditation and special stone stepping skills.

Anyways, pathways like these are really cool looking and I thought that they make an interesting picture.

Question

I thoroughly enjoy this picture from my brother's 2nd grade English class. I'm not sure if its because of the silhouette of the student against he bright window or what but I just think that it is really cool. Contrary to what the picture shows, the classroom is properly lit and the room's apparent darkness is just a trick of the camera.
Also, visiting the class was one of the most enjoyable days of the trip for me since being in a classroom as an observer is something rarely experienced anywhere.

Waterfall

High up in the mountains in a few government protected tourist attractions, there still exists a little bit of real nature. Unlike most places in china we visited, there is actually wildlife like birds around here. One of the biggest things they were pointing out to us with all the signs around here is how clean the air is. Normally all these clean air signs would strike people like us as odd except for the fact that the air everywhere else is so dirty and polluted that
it really was noticeably cleaner here.

Chinese Garden

Oh yeah! I finally got the China pictures and now here is the first one. We visited this really elaborate garden while we were there and it provided quite a few nice pictures. I'll let you guys come up with your own thoughts on this one, I thought it was something enjoyable to look at.