Everlasting Lanterns

Location: Chinatown, San Francisco, Ca

Date: July 2011

In the ever intelligent words of Confucius, he claims "Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it." Certain individuals can jump to a specific location and be completely ignorant of the sole beauty of a place. I speak of people not as a whole, but as a group, a culture. A culture and generation that defines other cultures as taboo and often disgusting. I will admit, as a child, I perpetually found myself belittling my own culture. I never sought to seek the beauty of any culture, let alone my own. I, for one was ignorant, a child, immature, or growing up exploring my own individuality. There have been a handful of times that I regret dwindling precious years not acknowledging beauty itself. Culture is beautiful, a marvel to our generation. It seems as though today, the world is constantly aspiring to become ONE... a youthful aesthetic brigade. To me it feels as though it's a hunt to find a culture so genuine, so when I unexpectedly wandered into Chinatown, I felt a great sense of comfort. To the naked-ignorant-eye, chinatown might appear as a bedraggled, catchpenny location. I was re-living a dream, walking a street rich in color, colors that did not compliment one another in anyway. To me, the hot pink with lime green outlining building was indeed the most inferior. My eyes did not know where to rest, vibrant colors raced in every location each screaming for attention. The streets where decorated with traditional Chinese lanterns hung dangling and dancing, complementary of a crisp San Francisco breeze. Though I am not Chinese, I admire their culture, the Chinese stick together and often times look after one another. This place was not trash, but a treasure. For a quick second as I gazed aimlessly at the lanterns, the breeze appeared to have stopped and it was almost as if each individual lantern was calling me positioned and ready to have me snap a shot. Although I drained the life out of the picture, what I felt most that screamed home to me was the chinese lanterns that went on endlessly down the entire street. It was as if though the everlasting lanterns unified all of Chinatown.