China Holiday from December 2006 / January 2007 … spent Christmas in Shanghai (fantastic) then went down to Shaoxing, where I lived for a few years,  which is famous for it’s canals and yellow rice wine, though the canals had been drained for repair!

I then flew down to Kunming in Yunnan and spent New Years before heading down to Jinghong (fantastic). This was my second trip to Yunnan, the first in Liajiang (highly recommended).  I then made a trip to see the rice terraces in Yuanyang … sleeper bus … 12 hours … narrow mountain roads …night time … rain … fog … not recommended for the faint hearted!  I get into Yuanyang, blue skies and dead tired … wake up the next morning and the fog was so thick you could cut it with a knife … so I do nothing, hang in for another day and though impossible to imagine, the fog got thicker by the hour … needless to say, I saw nothing of the terraces, only the fog … nice fog though …

I had just purchased my Canon 30D a few months back, so was in a rather steep learning curve … I took a few thousand photographs … and “Faces of China” is a collection of street shots … in Jinghong and surrounding villages; Ji Nou Shan, Menghun, Nongyang and Xiding you get an “eye full” of the many ethnic minorities that exist in that region and colorful they are …