China in Photos
As part of a longer trip I embarked on in 1982 (detailed in my book When the Stars Align), I spent three weeks traveling through various parts of China - Beijing, Guilin, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Suzhou, Xian, and Hong Kong. The rest of my journey had been solo up to this point, but since China had only recently been opened to Western tourists, the language barrier posed a serious enough challenge that I decided to hook up with a formal tour group for this leg of it. My fellow travelers on this tour consisted mainly of Chinese-Americans going back to their homeland for an ancestral visit, and aside from the American tour leader I was the youngest person in the group.
Though I had been ill for some weeks by this point, my time in China nonetheless was a powerful experience for me. I suspect some of that stemmed from the fact that Chinese society had not been fully modernized yet, so I felt as though I was getting a taste of this country’s old ways and aesthetics, which were so different from what I was accustomed to back in the U.S. The sense of antiquity I felt traveling through this country was almost overwhelming at times, as though I was tapping into a cultural tradition with roots extending back countless millennia into the past.
What follows are some of my favorite photographs from that trip.
Ray Grasse is a writer, photographer, and astrologer living in the American Midwest. He is author of ten books, most recently In the Company of Gods and So, What Am I Doing Here, Anyway? His websites are www.raygrasse.com and www.raygrassephotography.com.