Tancho - Sacred Birds of the Orient 东方圣鸟丹顶鹤

From Dec. 23 to 31, 2012, I travelled to Hokkaido. The best reward for me during the trip was the strikingly surreal and other-worldly views of cranes resting far away in the misty water shrouded by the orange light of sunrise snow white. The sun light shone through the fog over the surface of the water and left a mysterious touch of beauty. Simply wonderful to the eyes of a Chinese who cherished the special symbolic meaning of cranes from the Taoist ideal of rising from the earthly worries and pursuits and escaping to the pure and undisturbed land a few skies above. Occasionally, a few cranes would fly off the water and pass just overhead when I realized they were really gigantic birds.