Chinese Garden, Portland, Oregon

In Portland, downtown near the Greyhound bus depot and the train station, there's a very carefully maintained and exquisite garden built by the Chinese settlers in Portland, perhaps as an apology for all the people they Shanghaied onto ships and then murdered if they complained too much about being slave sailors on a slow ship to Shanghai. Portland is where the phrase originated since that's where it actually happened. Whatever the case, the garden is magnificent. The docents there explained that it is built for feng shui, with lots of odd angles so luck can't escape easily. That's a very odd approach to building but the results are fantastic. I took these pictures back on a vacation there, perhaps in 2005? I'm not quite sure.

That's my wife hiding in the background with the red hair.

I'm particularly proud of this one. The balance and composition with the reflection in the foreground and details of the buildings beyond the garden walls? Excellent.

We really were there at a good time. There's lots of color and detail and the light was good. I took all these photos with a Minolta the size of a deck of cards. Love that camera.

Carefully placed potted plant, probably blooms like crazy later in the year.

Those things which look like paving stones? Guess what:

The light in this was ideal to capture every single pebble. So much effort.

Brilliant colors, stone and tile details, and my wife photographing everything with her professional grade equipment.

There are several of these limestone rocks imported from China, carved by raging rivers scattered around like statuary.

Note the angles of the roofs that don't meet. I bet there's a lot of splashing and drips when it rains. And this is Portland. It rains most of the time. 

I got a great shot of this bridge and its reflection. The colors there, and the smell of the flowers. A really great day.

Some of these end caps are cast bronze, and the dragon's whiskers were copper.

I tweaked the brightness and color saturation to make this photo more surreal and bring out the details in the building a bit. With better angles and without the color tweaks it looks more like this:

My best friend in the grey shirt and my wife to the left.

This is what the Tea House looks like from further back. Magnificent, right?

The Portland Chinese Garden is worth visiting if you've got a few hours to spare and find yourself in town sometime. I recommend it. I can't promise the weather will be this nice, but you can't have everything, can you? Hope you enjoyed my pictures.