I have just put up a gallery focused on Chinese guesthouses. It is not going to be displayed in any national art gallery, but it is a fun, photographic look at something that is a very engrained part of my life in China. And honestly, I fear that China’s development is going to destroy the quaint, stoic guesthouse and turn it into some smutty, cheap lodging.
With so many of my travels taking me deep into the Chinese countryside, I usually have had not choice but to warm up to these little guesthouses, because there has been no other lodging option in town. The beds are nothing to write home about, the bathrooms are notoriously awkward to use, and the neighborhood environment is often a little to karaoke-loving for me. Still, as I say in the gallery itself, it hits somewhere close to home.
In the big cities, I often still stay in these guesthouses for a few, very good reasons. The big hotels are just expensive versions of basically the same room. The only difference is that they have nicer free toiletries (I have brought my own anyway), free annoying calls from prostitutes, and open access to pornographic television programs (which are technically illegal in China). Why not pay one-fifth of the price and get the same thing. I do not exactly want those extra options anyway.
Anyway, enjoy the guesthouse gallery. I wanted to use my camera to capture some of the feeling of the guesthouses. You could think of them as minimalistic photos, actually, because a proper portrayal of a Chinese guesthouse would necessarily be minimalist.
When you mentioned under the first photo that the photos might seem plain to some people, its so true though! It reminds me of how long its been since I’ve been in a little zhao dai suo! To me, you’ve portrayed them quite well!
It was my best stab at communicating “plain and simple” to people. There is certainly nothing flashy, nor anything classy about them. So, I tried to convey dullness in the photographs, yet, something interesting at the same time.