Shaolin and Shanghai from a Different Perspective

Last year one of my Chinese teachers warned me that the biggest thing he feared traveling through China in the summer not the heat, but the crowds. Although I try to compose my photos to avoid tourists, I thought it might be interesting to post a few with tourists as the main focus. The first shot is from outside of Shaolin Temple in Henan, China. Perhaps more than any other Buddhist temple in China, Shaolin temple has become incredibly commercialized. Visiting feels more like a trip to Disneyland than to a place of worship (not surprising given that Shaolin temple was considering an IPO in 2009). The second image is a snapshot from the parking lot of Shaolin temple. Check out all those tour busses! The third image is looking down Nanjing Road from the bund. If you look at the bottom of the image to can see a pretty solid crowd of people walking towards the Bund. It was like that all night, and people were overflowing from the sidewalk into the righthand lane of traffic on both sides of the street. And this was just a normal Saturday night in August. The last image is from the viewing platform on the Bund in Shanghai, where there is at least half a mile usually full of crowds of onlookers. For me, seeing such large crowds always a sharp reminder of just how huge China's population is.