A few weeks ago as I was savoring the pictures in a great photo essay on The Atlantic website called Scenes from 21st Century China, my eyes lingered on photo #37 because the caption said it was a Beijing neighborhood. “I wonder if I can figure out where the photo is taken,” I said to myself.
Tall apartment towers? That could be anywhere.
Lots of pink and coral colors…..hmmm, that seems familiar.
And that one building to the left…it looks just like the building I live in .
And the one next to it….. THAT looks just like the building I see from my living room window!
WAIT A MINUTE!! This is a picture of my neighborhood, most likely taken from the CCTV Tower.
I focused and spotted other familiar buildings that house my neighborhood haunts: the supermarket; the foot massage; the tailor; my favorite restaurant, and of course our beloved Ruyi Business Hotel.
If you’ve ever wondered what my neighborhood looks like, this is it!
Since this photo was most likely taken from a couple of miles away with a very powerful telephoto lens, space is compressed, giving the neighborhood an appearance of being much more densely crowded than it really is.
Here’s a picture of the hood from street level.
One neighborhood, two perspectives.
I thought your punchline to this story was going to be: “It IS a photo I took but someone else got the credit for it.” Glad it turned out as it did. What a view of humanity you have…er…what a view of where most of humanity lives in those buildings.