Yongfoo Elite Bar, Shanghai, China. Photo by Carl Werts

Guest photographer Carl Werts has been a friend since our time at the Pasadena Athletic Club in the 1980’s.  He’s an avid mountaineer and has enjoyed rock, ice and high altitude alpine climbing in France, New Zealand, Bolivia, Mexico, and Nepal. He’s summited Mt. McKinley in Alaska and Ama Dablam in the Himalaya, capturing images along the way.

The balance, harmony, and light of this photograph caught my attention when I saw it hanging in Carl’s dental office. Intrigued, I wondered what mysteries lay behind those graceful curtains. Carl kindly agreed to share the photograph and its story with “Wondrous Nature”.

Two years ago, Carl travelled to Suqain, China with other dentists, doctors, and nurses to provide care to the poor, elderly, and infirmed. Besides providing humanitarian clinical care, they visited special needs schools providing donations, gifts, and toys. “Trips like these allow us to see and experience the world through a different lens while we share our skills with those less fortunate,” Carl said.

On the last night of the trip, Carl arranged to meet a patient who lived and worked in Shanghai and asked to see a part of the city that tourists might not normally see — that place was Yongfoo Elite bar.

This exotic bar, restaurant, place for meetings, weddings and other social gatherings is housed in an old consular residence on Yongfu Lu in the former French Concession. “Several little private gardens, guest houses and shrines are all tucked in around a sprawling estate, as exotically landscaped with décor as in this image,” said Carl. Yongfoo Elite is “tropical but not quite, hints of walls with old framing, the Buddha statue, the big barrel pot with light illuminating, the overall lighting and color.  To me just a very cool image.”

Carl began taking photos in high school with a new SLR camera. He resumed photography in dental school in Washington, D.C. During his mountaineering time, he became an avid photographer since so many people were interested in his photos of far off (and high up) places.

This “cool Image” was taken with a Canon EOS Rebel T3. Namaste, Carl!