How to Make the Best of a Poor Attraction

Black Dragon Pool, Lijiang China


While we were in Lijiang, we wandered our way to the Black Dragon Pool. It is a famous park area with a large pool that acts like a mirror and reflects both the sky and the nearby Jade Snow Mountain. It has a arched marble bridge as well as a pagoda built onto the water. I’d read about how wonderful this place was TripAdvisor, that is, until a few years ago when it dried up. Now it’s a cracked lake bed and there’s not much to see.

With this knowledge and it being cloudy outside, we still decided to check it out. As expected, the lake was completely gone and the bottom of the pool was just cracked mud. In some ways it look interesting as the mud had curled up into small pieces.

I decided to make this a challenge: to photograph this place that tells exactly what it is and give it some feeling, like an old attraction that’s seen better days. We walked around the pool that had a few people and I think I succeeded with my pictures of the dead trees. There are a number of park benches as well as some exercise equipment that’s pretty common in Asia, one of which was in use and squeaking a lot. Because of the cloud cover, we weren’t able to see the Jade Snow Mountain

Black Dragon Pool, Lijiang China
It’s easy to see how this park would have looked in it’s glory but sometimes things don’t turn out as intended. As long as we were in Lijiang, it was overcast and so we never did see the Jade Snow Mountain in it’s full glory. In summer, it wouldn’t have snow so it probably wouldn’t look the best either. We’re okay with that because we can still say we’ve experienced the place and seen something different, even if it’s a dried up lakebed and cracked mud.

The Last of the water, Lijiang China