China « David Brown Photography

China

Xiao Long Bao in the steamer

Little Dragon Dumplings. More like a little gift from heaven, these things: pork and some soup stock which is chilled until it gets to a kind of jelly consistency, and then wrapped into a dumpling.

When it’s heated, the soup stock obviously gets liquified, and a taste explosion ensues. Just make sure you work out how hot that stuff inside really is, though: my first Xiao Long burned the hell out of my mouth, and eveyone at the table was watching my reaction to eating this Chinese delicacy, so there was no unobtrusive way for me to help myself out of the fire.

I just said my eyes were watering because of the deliciousness. Not sure they believed me, though.

This shot was taken near Tian Dzhe Fun in Shanghai, of a street Xiao Long Bao seller’s stall. I was excited at the find, bought 3 of them, took a bite, and found to my surprise that there was fish in them. Or crab. Or something vaguely piscine.

And to have that taste hit you when you’re expecting pork isn’t a happy sensation.

I like the shot, though. Looks better than it tastes, that’s for sure.

This shot hit #61 on Flickr’s Explore page on the 18th of May 2009. Nice one, guys, thanks a lot for your support.

China / Chinese / Chinese culture / Holiday / Shanghai / Street photography / Traditional craft / Zhezhiang / sunset — No Comments
22
Apr 09

Zhezhiang fairytale

Walking through the narrow lanes that make up Zhezhiang, you get to see alot of traditional crafts being put on for the tourists. Most make you feel like you’re wandering through a kind of low-budget Disneyland, and the crafts are totally put on show for you. But one area had people who were spinning silk from silkworm cocoons the traditional way, and making shoes, clothes and quilts out of it.

The stuff they were making was pretty high quality, and the methid employed were certainly unmechanized. But the most striking thing about the scene was the atmosphere: felt like I had slipped down the rabbit hole and ended up in a fairy tale, something like Sleeping Beauty or Rumpelstiltzkin.

The work of a few seconds to lift out my Nikon D300 and grab a few frames. I’m not even sure they knew I was there.

Be prepared / China / Nikon / Nikon D300 / Shanghai / Street photography / Tian Dze Fan — No Comments
21
Apr 09

The view down the alley

Walking down a lane in the Tian Dze Fan artists area of Shanghai. Saw this scene, and something struck me about it. Didn’t last for a long time, but since I was surgically bonded to my NIkon D300 on this trip, it didn’t take a moment for me to get set and roll.

Not sure what caught my eye here, but I think it was the fact that each house in the little lane here had a washing bar stuck out over the lane, and that gives a nice set of lines at the top of the picture which disappear into the distance, and contrast to the two sets of parralels which run down the corners of the shot. Whatever it is, I came back from a trip with at least one pic that both looks and feels like you’re there.

50mm / Candy / China / Chinese culture / Nikon D300 / Shanghai / Sweet / Traditional craft / Zhezhiang — No Comments
20
Apr 09

Sticky situation

This is a string of sugar that allegedly came from wheat, if my translation serves. It was being worked into a VERY sticky candy in a traditional Chinese method at a candy store in Zhezhiang, near Shanghai.

The man who was working with this mess kept grabbing that stick, pulling the sugar out into a long line rather like you stretch a piece of gum, and then winding it back together. I bought some of the end result, but didn’t enjoy it: way too sugary and so sticky I couldn’t talk for at least 15 minutes. Toffee has nothing on this stuff.

China / Chinese culture / Holiday / Shanghai / Zhezhiang / culture / lost art / old-world — No Comments
17
Apr 09

It's Friday! Time to break out my happy shoes!

And here they are:

This was shot in a craft store area in Zhezhiang, a Ming-dynasty era town near Shanghai. Filled with canals, crafts and ancient houses and structures, it’s well worth the visit.

As I was walking down one of the narrow lanes between the buildings, I noticed these traditional Chinese children’s shoes in a store. Irresistible image.

50mm / China / Nikkor / Nikon / Nikon D300 / Shanghai / Street photography — No Comments
16
Apr 09

On the back of the Bund

Spent a lot of time walking round the streets of Shanghai. Since I resisted the urge to pack all the gear I thought I could use, and restricted myself to my Nikon D300 and a 50mm 1.4 slung over my shoulder, and an Sb-800 flash (which I strapped to my belt, embarrassingly) I was travelling light and had everything ready all the time.

Using this rig, I also got to know the variations of that Nikkor 50mm pretty damn well in all the F-stops: where the sharpness was a little lacking, where it was so damn sharp you could cut yourself, how it reacted to bright light at midday, and when it struggled to focus in the dark. No changing to a lens that would be more suited to the conditions: if I wanted the shot I had to work to make it happen. Realised that sometimes limitations are really liberations. Plus it’s really small and light, and although it’s a little tight on a crop sensor, it’s great for people and for isolating parts of the image. I stuck a circular polarizer

on the front of it to enhance in the usual way, but also to act as a neutral density filter and give me 2-3 stops of grace in the midday sun, and it worked like a charm.

One thing that struck me about Shanghai was the juxtapositions: drab grey concrete pavements with the colour explosion of a Tai Chi class going through their movesin front of it. Young beggars on the old glory of the Bund. It’s often all mixed up there, and I’d find myself decoding a completely different story to the one my wife was looking at, although we were looking at the same scene. And amid the feeling of new prosperity, there was the constant reminder that life is still really tough for many people there, and for many their next meal is in no way guaranteed.

Just behind the post office on the Bund, in an area filled with monuments to money – the old money of the original Bund buildings, all granite marble and brass, and the new buildings that call out to them from Pudong, across the Yellow River – I stumbled on a lean-to with a tiny kitchen, a bed, and some clothes. Nobody was around, but someone calls that place home. I didn’t intrude, just grabbed some shots from the pavement, and went on my way.

China / Chinese / Ming Dynasty / Shanghai / Street photography / Yu Gardens / Yu Yuen / food / street food — No Comments
15
Apr 09

Back from Shanghai.

You may have noticed the lack of posts recently. Took a great Easter weekend out in Shanghai. Back at work today, and feeling lot like this:

This is a shot of a fast food vendor in the old section of Shanghai, the Yu Gardens (or to give its Chinese name, Yu Yuen) area. Crazy place, Shanghai, and surprisingly old world: much of it remains the same as it was in the Ming Dynasty. Anywhere else that I’ve been in China seems to be about 20 years old, tops. The Cultural Revolution did a great job of erasing the past, and rampant industrialization and economic development have finished the job off.

But not in Shanghai and the surrounding countryside, and the city gains a lot for it. Travelling around Shenzhen and Guangzhou can be a depressing experience: miles of industrial compounds and heavy industry, which has changed the landscape from green to grey. Shanghai and the area around it was refreshingly beautiful (well, parts of Shanghai, anyway: some parts are quite depressing as well).

Speaking of the pic above, I’m not sure if that makes anyone hungry. Seemed to be a popular snack, though: beef balls in noodle soup. I think the reason they put the skull in there was to infuse essence of beef into the soup stock. Maybe it was just a neat way of advertising: I wasn’t having any, but then I went to Shanghai looking for Xiao Long Bao, which they had in abundance. Just that most of them were made of hairy crabs, not pork, and that’s a nasty surprise to get sprung on you: expecting pork and you get a fishy-tasting hairy crab ball.

Got lots of food shots of Shanghai, too, which are going to go up here soon. More posts, many many more posts, to follow. I made a lot of images out there, and now I’m slowly going through post. Which is another reason I feel as if my skull is immersed in a vat of boiling water.

Cantonese Opera / China / Chinese / Festival / Ming Chee Sing / Tai Po / community / culture / hong kong / travel — No Comments
2
Dec 08

Cantonese Opera Again!

After running all my Cantonese opera shots through Lightroom ( which is a total Godsend, I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to get involved in it) I’ve found that I have quite a few that I really like. Stage lighting helps, but I think the thing that contributed most to the final look of the day was my new Nikon D300.

This camera rocks, seriously. Much better in low light than my old Nikon D50, which couldn’t go above ISO 800 in most situations, and which didn’t have the megapixel depth for much cropping and post-processing.

You can clearly see a differnence between these two cameras, if they are used side by side under the same conditions.

Here are more of the shots, and I have to point out that these were taken during a performance of a very famous opera company, with no flash allowed and very tight angles (I had to duck down at the fornt of the stage and not bother anyone who was trying to appreciate the show).

Enjoy!

Cantonese Opera / China / Chinese / Festival / Ming Chee Sing / culture / hong kong / hot / noisy — No Comments
27
Nov 08

Cantonese Opera at Tai Ping Festival in Hong Kong

I went up to Lam Tsuen in Tai Po (Hong Kong) over the weekend, to a once-in-ten-year festival that they were having up there. Crowded as all hell, but that’s part of deal here in Hong Kong. It’s even part of the criteria for judging whether an event is enjoyable: it needs to be “hot” and “noisy” to be good, or in Cantonese ” Yi-Lau”. It was both of those, and very good spirited and relaxed as well. I wish I could find more events like that here.

It was really my first time to see a full Cantonese Opera show live, and it was a spectacle. I was lucky enough to be able to go backstage to see the preparations, and to do this with a very famous opera company: Ming Chee Sing Chinese Opera.

Here are some of the shots that I got from Sunday, and there are a lot more on my Flickr stream: