San Francisco
Feb. 22nd, 2010 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranWent out and did some sightseeing today, but didn't take many photos on account of it raining almost continuously.
I did get to City Lights and Caffe Trieste as recommended by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ritaxis. On balance, after trudging around the wet city most of the morning, sitting in a warm cafe was probably the smartest place to be. I had a look through some books of Chinese poetry in City Lights, but I couldn't find any that were quite what I was looking for.
In the afternoon, after some work in my hotel room, I went out to see the Shanghai exhibition at the Asian Art Museum. This was quite an intriguing exhibition. It was interesting how the traditional "language" of Chinese painting was mixed in with new western concepts the bustling energy of Shanghai in the thirties. One picture I especially liked was a banner painting featuring a river and a hill and a sunset, but using Western perspective. In a typically Chinese banner painting, the eye would normally flow from top to bottom, following the peaks and crags as water might. In this picture, the eye is drawn straight in to the centre, making the effect almost like suddenly being shown a 3D image when you're expecting a 2D picture on a page. The regular galleries at the museum were also quite impressive. No pictures unfortunately.
I did get to City Lights and Caffe Trieste as recommended by
ritaxis. On balance, after trudging around the wet city most of the morning, sitting in a warm cafe was probably the smartest place to be. I had a look through some books of Chinese poetry in City Lights, but I couldn't find any that were quite what I was looking for.In the afternoon, after some work in my hotel room, I went out to see the Shanghai exhibition at the Asian Art Museum. This was quite an intriguing exhibition. It was interesting how the traditional "language" of Chinese painting was mixed in with new western concepts the bustling energy of Shanghai in the thirties. One picture I especially liked was a banner painting featuring a river and a hill and a sunset, but using Western perspective. In a typically Chinese banner painting, the eye would normally flow from top to bottom, following the peaks and crags as water might. In this picture, the eye is drawn straight in to the centre, making the effect almost like suddenly being shown a 3D image when you're expecting a 2D picture on a page. The regular galleries at the museum were also quite impressive. No pictures unfortunately.
