‘A river runs through it' is what you can imagine happening to these houses if the river rises another six inches or so.
I captured this image back in 1991 in Suzhou, China but I don't recall if I was on a boat or on the other bank of the river. You can imagine the wake of a boat sloshing the water over the banks so I don't know if boat traffic was regulated here or not.
On the left hand side of the frame, a woman appears to be washing something in the river. Was this river the ‘running water' for these houses then? I hope not but I suspect the river water (and everything else dissolved or suspended int it) was (and maybe still is) used extensively in these houses.
I love this collection of roofs. While the tiles are all the same, there's such a variety in the pitches, pitch lengths and apex directions. Clearly this little section of the community grew organically and not from some master plan. I'm also intrigued by the two windows with bars on them. If the bars are needed, why are they not on the adjacent windows also?
