Weekend

On Saturday I didn’t wake up until noon. After working intensely for a week, I felt physically and emotionally drained. I took a glance outside the window. The weather was excellent. The sun was shining and the sky was clear. Staring at the ceiling, I planned the day for half an hour and then got up.

I took a train south to Chinatown to get my empty stomach filled. The food was enjoyable, partly because I hadn’t eaten any Chinese food for the whole week and was craving for it, and partly because I was starved half to death.

After lunch, I went out to photograph Chicago. I had bought the digital camera half a month before but hadn’t had a chance to take a single picture. This camera was featured in Time a few months ago and is obviously gaining heat. It is of the size of a cigarette box. Although the technical parameters are not so high for the so-called ‘professionals,’ the camera is fully automatic – the right type for me. My experience with cameras has been limited to fully automatic cameras and disposable cameras.

I have taken pictures of Phoenix and Las Vegas, but I have never taken pictures of Chicago, the city in which I have been living for three years. I had also taken almost no picture of Shanghai, the city in which I lived for over twenty years. Chicago and Shanghai seem surprisingly similar: Both are huge cities with endless numbers of skyscrapers; both have congested streets stuffed perpetually with cars and buses; and both had countless shops filled with ads and people. So it became even more challenging to catch something different enough to be displayed on pictures.

I had always liked Lake Michigan, so I decided to photograph it. It looks great when it is not icy and when the sky is clear, when the water is blue and stretches to infinity, and when a few yachts occasionally sail on the lake. I enjoy a strong wind puff my face and blow all the fatigues of work away with it. Every time I walked along the lake bank, I felt the tininess of human beings and the greatness of the nature. Shanghai has a big river, too. But the water is yellow because of the soil in it, and there were no yachts on the river but rather large ships coming from and going to the sea. I thought that this would be worth taking a picture. So I found a place where I could see the lake bank stretched out and curled back as it extended near the skyscrapers in downtown. I took the shot.

It was near twilight and everything was covered by a beautiful golden light. I randomly took a few pictures of the yachts, the grasslands, and the buildings, and decided to capture the sunset. I sat on a small hill covered with grasses and waited for the sun to set. The weather had turned cold – the temperature had dropped to under 40 degrees. But I waited and waited, and the sun just wouldn’t set. After waiting for an hour and being practically frozen, I decided to abandon the idea. As I was leaving, however, the sun began to submerge. I ran back hastily to the hill and took the picture of the sunset.

On my way home with five pictures in my camera, I knew that my photographing of Chicago had just begun.