This week on Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #204, Sylvia Bacon from the blog, My Colorful Expression leads the challenge with a topic somewhat challenging for me, Doors.

I must admit, I had quite a hard time finding photos for this challenge. As a landscape photographer, I don’t normally photograph doors. In fact, a majority of my photos don’t contain buildings at all. It took me a while to find some and this was one of them.

I took this photo during my 4-month sabbatical in China back in 2017 when I visited my grandmother’s village in probably more than two decades. At the time, even though I didn’t look the part, I felt like a foreigner, not somebody returning to her roots. I barely knew the language, not to mention I didn’t know where I was half the time since everything had changed so drastically.

I was invited to my grandma’s village to celebrate one of my distant cousin’s baby turning one month old, which is a big deal in China. When I first arrived at the village, I was shocked at all the new mansions that lined the narrow street of the village, which look grand next to the old houses.

As I spent the afternoon walking, touring the different parts of the village, I couldn’t help but notice the red banners taped beside the door. There are still some superstitious folks around this village. I met a few old folks along the walk and when I tried to take photos of the scenery, they tried to bat my camera away. I tried to tell them I wasn’t taking their pictures but apparently they don’t understand my dialect.

Deep down, I found it fascinated to find such superstitious people as to put up red banners to ward off evil, to ensure the safety of family members, and the camera can capture souls (I was told later that’s the reason the old lady tried to bat my camera away).

Even a house that’s no longer occupied had one and you can clearly see by the two rectangles on either side of the door that there used to be more taped up again the wall.