This is the first post of a blog series documenting my recent trip to China.

Guiyang is the capital of the Guizhou province in southwestern China and the start and end of our photography tour. I joined William Yu and a group of like-minded travelers to explore the Guizhou province, learn more about its ethnic minorities and to photograph them.

I arrived a few days before the tour started to discover Guiyang. One of the local attractions is the Jiaxiu Pavilion. It is a three level building sitting on a big rock in the middle of the Nanming River. The first iteration was built during the Ming dynasty (1573-1620), but a fire destroyed it in 1621. Over the years, it was rebuilt and destroyed again by fire multiple times. The current incarnation dates back to 1909, the sixth time that the Pavilion was rebuilt.

The pavilion does not only look stunning from the outside, but it has nice interiors too.

I loved the view of the ceiling on the top floor. There were a lot of chuckles around me when I took this image laying on the ground….

I came back to the Nanming River at sunset to photograph the pavilion. I was really surprised when suddenly all the high-rises turned on their decorative lights. And they were not just static lights, they had patterns and changing colors. The walkway along the river was nicely illuminated as well. So cool and totally unexpected!

But the objective was to capture the pavilion with its lights turned on. It looks even better at night.

The next image shows the Jiaxiu Pavilion from the other side, in front of the lit high-rises. 

I didn’t know it then, but this was a great introduction to China and lights. More about you will see in my upcoming blog posts.