WuYuan And Its Rape Seed Flowers, JiangXi, China 2008
by Kelvin Khor
500 plus kilometers away from Wuxi is a place called WuYuan (婺源), which is located in north east of JiangXi province. The flame of WuYuan lies in its well preserved old villages and beautiful countryside. It has been voted as one of the most beautiful old villages in China. During early to mid of March, rape flowers fields could be seen at their best across WuYuan’s countryside. We took the warm spring weather and drove down to WuYuan over the weekend. My GPS clocked 20hr of moving time during the two days. That includes some very bumpy ride on unpaved country roads. The rented MPV’s suspension was not built to handle this condition with comfort of passengers in mind.
Last year I was focusing on photographing houses of old villages (my previous photo could be found HERE). This time I was planning for WuYuan’s landscaping with rape flowers fields. Unfortunately, we were greeted with heavy overcast weather and morning mist. The outcome does not turn out as I would have like. As a photographer, I just have to take what Mother Nature has offered.
This is the same village I passed by last year. The bright yellow rape flowers coated a layer of spring color to the old village giving it a freshly look.
Rape flowers are very common in China but it is here that they have attracted many people to visit WuYuan at this time.
LiKeng (理坑) is one village that has little change over few hundred years as compared to others due to its isolated location. The oldest house that still around today is four hundreds year old. Many villages like this have very much been commercialized due to blooming tourism. I recommend you to visit this place first if time is a constraint. But then you still need to pay RMB20 ticket to enter this village.
This curious young boy came to check me out as his friendly family was watching at the back.
Not all villagers like to have their picture taken. So it is better asking for permission before taking. Some will ask for money which I hate and normally I just walk away. As I encountered later, two little boys hugged both of my legs and demanded for one RMB to buy sweet after I took their picture.
I found this baby in one of the alleys. Of course his older sister (presumably) was sitting nearby watching a stranger taking his picture.
On the second morning, we visited JiangLing (江岭) terraced rape plant fields. The morning was misty as you can see from the low contrast shots below. How I wish for a perfect light.
I used a telephoto lens to take a compress landscape.
After waiting for an hour plus we gave up and headed home. Another seven hours on the road. Although I don’t have a keeper, the fresh air, calm countryside and rape flower fields are enough to justify for the weekend get away trip. Maybe I have better luck next year, if I’m still around in China.
Note:
All pictures were shot in RAW and processed with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.0. And B+W pictures were converted using same software. I found this by far the best way to convert digital color images to B+W. I can view and adjust the result in grayscale while comparing its color version side by side. Very cool feature.
