Red is China’s favorite color. Although Chinese people’s growing love for bright and screamy color combination produces a lot of extravagant color spectacles and questionable urban lighting phenomena, the color red is still the champion of Chinese streets (and hearts).
Even more so as (Chinese) New Year approaches, everyone gets ready for the biggest event of the year. Red is inseparable from tradition, homes and families. It is a color of good luck, a color of wealth, a color of life. A color of China.
Guangdong Museum at night
burial suit of the Nanyue King: made of jade pieces, threaded with red silk, temporarily in Guangdong Museum, usually in Nanyue Museum
captured at White Clouds Mountain Park
the wishing tree – White Clouds Mountain in Guangdong/Canton
wishes
lanterns in shopping streets
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lantern shop
Lanterns are no longer needed to illuminate a room, but are still an integral part of brightening a Chinese home. Beware, a billion people are getting ready to embark on an journey during the world’s biggest annual movement and Spring Festival craziness. As China as a nation gets ready, Guangzhou, a city of worker bees, buzzes louder than ever to fulfill the demands of many. A bit off the tourist track in Guangzhou, a few streets and its backalleys stay up till late at night, arranging lanterns, packing piles of boxes of red lucky charms ready for shipping, looking through red envelopes. In those narrow streets, long after the last sunrays have left, red lanterns still glow in a comforting shade of light, alongside LED and neon lamps. Dear Year of the Chicken, Guangzhou is ready.
getting ready for Chinese New Year
Another odd photograph in red, a kid is fishing for little fishies in a small basin. In the background, other kids look into red buckets filled with their catch.
kid in Liwan Park in reds, fishing for little goldfish
January 15th – January 19th 2017