Yunzen Liu’s Web3D blog-style website is a most interesting find, namely for the superb collection of stylized panoramas from China. Shot on Yunzen’s travels throughout the land his panoramas show landscapes of impossible beauty: winding, lazy rivers, off-beat alleyways, gardens, monumental Buddhas and other slices of life and scenery from across this vast country. China’s mass is divided into 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities and two special adminstrative regions, and Yunzen manages to capture snippets from at least six of them, including Gui Lin City in Guangxi, Fujian, Hubei, Anhui and Shandong. Quite a feat!
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Yunzen Liu became interested in panoramas back in 1997, first using Java and later progressing to QTVRs and fullscreen panos. He has studied computer graphics and CAD and has recently become more involved with 3D graphics and real-time rendering technology. Yunzen lives in central China, Wuhan city in the province of Hubei, and works for the Yangtse River resource committee, building the largest water power station in the world. “China is a great country,” he says. “It has a long history with a rich and colorful culture, and beautiful, supernatural scenery. I hope that I can travel throughout China and make panos to introduce these to the world.”
Although the panoramas aren’t perfect (there are some visible seams, lens reflections and sunspots) the technical composition and beautiful vistas more than make up for it. Below is a selection of my favorites from the site, but be sure to check it out for the other dozen or so for yourself. All the panos on his site are fullscreen, under 2MB is size, and load quickly with a broadband connection. Yunzen also offers flat 180-degree panos for those with dialup access.
First Bend of the Yangtze River
The Yangtze River, also known as the Changjiang, flows through the center of China and is the third longest river in the world. Starting from the Tangula Snow Mountain in the northern Tibetan Plateau, the Yangtze’s source, the river plows through Qinhhai, Tibet, Sichuan, Yunnan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui and Jiangsu before it empties into the East China Sea at Shanghai, 6300 km later. About 44 miles outside of Lijiang in Yunnan Province, at a place called Stone Drum, unusual geological phenomena force the Yangtze to make a sudden U-shaped bend and flow to the northeast.
Yunzen’s panorama is shot at this nearly 180-degree turn, a sight reminiscent of a landscape painting with its wide bank and gentle water. This is the First Bend of the Yangtze River - a world-famous geological phenomenon and an extraordinary panoramic scene.
‘The Mountain is a Buddha, the Buddha is a Mountain’
The Leshan Giant Buddha in Leshan City, Sichuan Province is a 230ft (71m) tall statue carved into the side of Lingyun Mountain overlooking the confluence of the Min, Qinqyi and Dadu rivers. It is reputed to be the largest carved stone Buddha in the world. Sichuan Province – also known as the “Land of Abundance” is located in the southwest of China and is one of the largest (87 million population) and most inaccessible provinces in China.
Tulou Clan Homes, Yongding County , Fujian Province
This pano is taken from the courtyard inside a large earth-walled building known as the ‘tulou’, a clan home created by the Hakka, an ethnic group that moved to the south in several migrations over the centuries because of the continuing invasions of foreigners. Tulou means ‘earth building’, a reference to its outer walls, which are made from specially treated rammed earth. Tulous are specific to Jiangxi, Fujian and Guangdong provinces, following the flow of the Hakka people from central China to the South. As most Hakka resided in mountains, communal houses made of compacted earth were built to provide protection against bandits and wild animals. The tulou is not a single building; it is occupied normally by a kin group and is more like an apartment or a small village. Over twenty thousand of these houses still stand today, ten of which are over 600 years old
Rafting Down the Yulong River
The Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, called "Gui" for short, is situated in the southern part of China, bordering Vietnam. Guilin is a popular tourist area in the region with scenery that is reputedly second to none, no doubt in part due to the amazing Karst limestone mountains surrounding the area. Imagine floating down the crystal waters of the Yulong River, the biggest branch of the Lijiang River, on a bamboo raft. Yunzen did just that on a cruise trip from Guilin to Yangshuo. “One thing surprised me on the bamboo raft trip along Yulong River,” he writes, “we didn’t expect the scenery to be such a paradise”.
Equipment
Yunzen uses a 17 mm Tokina lens, film and scanner, along with his tripod, and typically takes six shots in portrait orientation and then one up and one down. He uses Panotools and Photoshop for stitching and editing, and Panocube.
