SINGAPORE: Towering high above the clouds and offering majestic views of its snowy mountain range and surrounding forests, the Wawu Mountain range in Sichuan, is a major draw for many Chinese tourists.
Determined to get a good panoramic photo was Wei Xi, who travelled to the area with friends in January.
An idea struck her when she noticed several official CCTV cameras in the area, which were mounted on poles and pointed in different directions.
“I had a brainwave. Since we could access the public surveillance feeds of these places, we could (pose in front of cameras) at the location and take screen grabs,” Wei wrote on her Xiaohongshu account.
No selfie sticks or expensive camera equipment was necessary.
Live feeds from the surveillance cameras also proved useful for observing conditions atop the mountain, she said, as the group had been worried “there would be no snow” during their visit.
With an extensive and sophisticated surveillance network of 600 million cameras monitoring its 1.4 billion population, China is one of the most surveilled countries in the world.
And tourists have been making use of CCTV cameras planted at popular scenic areas to take their “surveillance souvenir photos” – screenshots from live video feeds accessible to the public.
On Xiaohongshu, users have been sharing their CCTV travel photos and experiences.
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