I had the good fortune to be awarded a fellowship from the Chinese Academy of Sciences that allowed me to spend two months in China (15 August – 15 October 2016) working with colleagues in Xi’an, Beijing, Tibet, and Kunming. Much of my time in China was occupied with the normal academic routine of research, writing, editing, and teaching, but my Chinese colleagues ensured that I had plenty of time for sight-seeing, learning about local culture and cuisine, and exploration of areas both on and off the normal tourist routes.

This page is the entrée to what I feel are the best few percent of the thousands of photos I took in China.¹ As my time in China was not a photography expedition, I only used two cameras: my standard travel rig consisting of a Nikon D_f with a 28-300mm f3.5-5.6 Nikon ED auto-focus zoom lens; and the camera built into my Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphone. All post-processing was done in Adobe Lightroom.

If you only have either a very short attention span or very little time, take a look at:

The Best of the Best

But if you want to spend a little more time with me in China, look at these:

Xi’an (including elsewhere in Shaanxi and Sichuan Provinces)
Beijing
The Tibetan Plateau (along the Silk Road in Qinghai and Gansu Provinces)
Kunming

All photographs are © 2016 by Aaron M. Ellison, all rights reserved. For permission to use or reproduce any of these images, or to purchase a print, please contact me.

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*Title lifted, with grateful acknowledgment, from the song of the same name by Paul Kantner and Grace Slick, released on the album Baron von Tollbooth & the Chrome Nun, and produced by Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, and David Freiberg; ©Grunt/RCA 1973. Jerry Garcia plays lead guitar on the track. Hearing this song shortly after it was released in 1973 was a major inspiration for my undergraduate studies of Chinese and Chinese philosophy, and continues to provide an important backdrop for my ongoing work in China and collaborations with Chinese scientists. Here’s a link to the song on YouTube that was uploaded a couple years ago by Freiberg.

¹My travel-blog is elsewhere on this site (click here, or on the “blog” tab on the menu above), and that page has lots of daily photos of scenery and food.