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.

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.

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.

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.

Tokyo essentialized.

This shot sums up Tokyo for me: Pachislot and vending machines. Sure, Tokyo is busy and crowded, but actually I wasn't too impressed by that. Maybe because I live Hong Kong, a place that has a smaller but more concentrated population. I was expecting to be wowed by the crowd there, and even awed by it. But even the fabled light-change at Shibuya Station wasn't as crazy as I thought it would be. I loved looking at it, like I outlined in this post, but that was more for what I could see in the crowd than how big it was. Drive down Nathan Road in Mongkok on a Sunday night, and watch the pedestrians cross the road when the traffic lights change: now that's an awesome crowd scene. No, crowds of people aren't what I think of when I think of Tokyo.

Tokyo for me means wandering around at night, down small lanes, grabbing beers and ramen in basement eateries, looking at interesting, happy people going by. Tokyo means street music like I've never heard before, performed by really talented artists who are listened to by the people around, not just dismissed with a glib " Not my style of music". Tokyo defininely has a lot going in the daytime, but like many great cities, Tokyo only properly wakes up at night.

Harajuku style

That's what I really love about Tokyo. You never know what you're going to see around the next corner. It really surprised me, with all you hear about how conformist Asian cultures are, and how there is no space for the individual , it's all about society and the good of the many.

I grew up in a small mining town in South Africa, and it was a lot less individualist than Tokyo. And certainly a lot less than Harajuku. I once went to our local pub back home with a friend of mine who had dreadlocks - nearly got the shit fun kicked out of us. Yet here we are, in a small but busy shopping street called, appropriately enough, Takeshita Street, just off Omote-Sando in Harajuku, and people dressed like this wander around without causing so much as a raised eyebrow or a second glance.

Wicked place to walk around, with people like this popping up - you feel like you're in the world of Akira or Ghost in the Shell. I think I created more of an impact than he did as he went by me, switching from my nikkor to my sigma, backing up to grab the shot, getting the Lowepro Slingshot in the way, out the way. He belonged. Obviously, I didn't.

Shibuya Starbucks

Did a lot of walking round Tokyo in the hot summer sunshine when I was there last. There's just so many places to go to, and so much to see, that you really can't keep in one place for too long. Well, I couldn't, but then I do have that problem when travelling. Just can't be satisfied with where I am, I need to see what's round the next corner - same as when I watch TV, channel-flipping every thirty seconds, totally obsessive-compulsive. The great thing in Tokyo: whatever's round that next corner is always going to be interesting.

The problem with my channel-flipping style, though, is that you literally can't go on forever. There's going to be a time in your day when your energy levels bottom out, and you need somewhere to regroup and refuel.

My favourite spot for this, in the middle of the day, was Starbucks. Boringly. But not just any Starbucks. The Starbucks in Shibuya, overlooking one of the busiest intersections in the world, where 1500 pedestrians cross the road each time the traffic lights change.

The thing about people in Tokyo is that they're just interesting. There are a load of different styles and cultural subgroups, and how you dress is a very important way of identifying which group you're in. Gothic, cosplay, kimono, punk, post-punk, arthouse, modern, 1920's, salaryman, pretty much any style you can think of you'll see walking round, and all pulled off really well. Here in Hong Kong, people don't have the same sense of style, and most of the street culture here is pretty monolithic - folks aren't creative about how they dress. There is some punk and very rarely some cosplay/dress-up, but you can tell the people are doing dress-by-numbers from a magazine. In Tokyo, you can tell people really live their subgroup. They don't look out of place at all.

The best place to see this, of course, is Harajuku, not Shibuya. But in Shibuya I could sit on the second floor of the Starbucks, armed with a 70-300mm, and drink my coffee while waiting for interesting things to happen. When they do, you just need to lift and shoot, and then go back to your coffee. With the crop sensor on the Nikon D50, I was able to get even closer to the action.

And when I got tired of people watching, there was a great Tsutaya to go and rifle through, looking for all the music that's hard to find in Hong Kong Records: Booka Shade, Justin Robertson, whatever I looked for, I could find. Pity there was only so much I could buy.