April 2011 Random Discovery Photo of the Month

Update – September 22, 2011: This post has now been integrated into this post about our Random Discovery Photos on our new website.

Every month I feature a "Random Discovery Photo of the Month" on our homepage, a photo that is "random" in both the traditional sense of the word (chosen with no very specific criteria in mind and in no conscious order) and the contemporary colloquial sense of "strange and surprising." Most of the photos on our site highlight China's many beautiful and culturally profound places, but I wanted to have a prominent place to regularly feature photos that reflect the delightfully humorous, quaint, or just plain weird things that foreign travelers inevitably experience in China. Most of these photos were taken by me during one of my many travel experiences in China, though occasionally I choose an interesting photo that I've come across on Flickr or another Internet source.

April's Random Discovery Photo of the Month is of a tiny kitten I came across in a Shanghai alley, perched high on a narrow ledge and apparently enjoying its own little patch of grass, while I was taking photos of a traditional "shikumen" district in the downtown area. (See my post entitled "Shanghai's Disappearing Shikumen" for more photos and an explanation of what "shikumen" are.) When I noticed it up there, it seemed like such a precarious place for something so fragile and innocent, particularly in the midst of an urban environment fraught with dangers for such small trusting creatures. No doubt my all-too-human tenderness was misguided, however, as I'm sure that millions of callow Shanghai kittens quickly learn to prosper in that perilous city. Anyway, I wrote a haiku (originally a Chinese form of poetry, I believe) to go with the photo:

Kitten on the edge

Small patch of urban ledge-grass

Precarious life

As work and life have kept me extremely busy over the last several months, I've been forced to let this blog lie fallow.  But now it's ready for planting, and over the next few months I'll be adding a wide range of posts that I hope people will find interesting, including culture- and literature-oriented posts, practical travel advice and information, lots of photos, and stories about more of my own travel experiences in China.

Coming soon: Some of our past Random Discovery Photos of the Month and the stories behind them.