Why I take street photos of Guangzhou.When traveling to a strange city, people usually,choose a,most direct way to try to understand the,place, that is, to walk around its streets. Thus,people’s impressions of a city mainly concentrate on the street sceneries: old buildings that contain the long history of the city; representational buildings that exhibit styles of famous architects, and modern shops that reflect the city’s consumption levels. When travelers come back home, what they bring back are almost always some of their photos taken in the city besides postcards, maps and local products which can not be found in their own city.

People travel to find out differences between cities. But what fascinates me is the strangers passing by in the streets. The experience of bumping into those strangers is really interesting.  The reason why I could meet them at this moment in this place is beyond explanation and may be just a matter of destiny or fate.

There are two kinds of people walking in the streets every day. They're either travelers or locals. Or if a city has a history of over 500 years, we can say all the people there are travelers. The only difference between travelers and locals is the time they spend there.

 Although I'm a local in Guangzhou, I still have the feeling of being a traveler here. This is not only due to the fact that I know the city will outlive me but also to the changes that are taking place here every day. Like a person who can't jump into the same river twice, I can’t see the same passerby through my window.  I have been enchanted by those ever changing street scenes: especially by people who are here today, but gone tomorrow.  

Therefore, I decided to take up my camera to record those people whom I have become attached to or those who passed by. Not a single one is to be missed. All of them.

How I take street photos of Guangzhou The idea of photography came from the principle of traditional western style painting, that is, to look at the world through a window. Therefore, traditional painting and modern photography have one thing in common---framing.

Framing is to make the main object most noticeable in the picture while other things out of the focus are unimportant. Shooting is to record things that are happening in your view finder the moment you push down the shutter release, those happened before or after are not to be considered. In this way, a picture is only a still of our long complicated dramatic life.

To look for the interesting segment of our life, I invented a method called: paste photography. The characteristic of this method is: it can extend the space of a picture infinitely. The running time of the picture is neither more nor less than the time I spent watching this great drama of life.

The process of this method is to shoot everything I saw in the street singly, such as a man, a road sign, a vehicle, and even the things as puny as a garbage can. Then I print them out according to the proportion of their actual size. After that, I cut out the figures of the objects to make solid cards, then place them in my house, let the street scenes recur. This Lilliput-like photo narration is my understanding of reproducing real life.

What happened to the street scenes of Guangzhou that I take photos of?

 I feel that the speed at which I take street photos of Guangzhou can never catch up its changes. My original idea was to take pictures of every street in Guangzhou to capture the whole city (somebody has already reminded me that I can never finish it in my entire life). However, since Guangzhou is not a fixed object and it is changing every day, my dream has finally become an illusion.  As human beings, we are constrained by time and space. How to do my job well within the constraints?  I even dare not be away from Guangzhou for a long time. Then another illogicality arises: my living space is even more limited.

Last time I was away for three weeks.  On the way back from the airport, I was in the taxi and found many youths dressed in uniform sitting under a big umbrella on the roadside, holding a water pipe in their hands, and with a notice board beside their feet. They looked exactly the same. A big question came into my mind immediately: what's going on in Guangzhou?

There's another case. In one summer, I was suffering from slight autism. I stayed at home day after day, watching DVD one after another. When I went back to the streets, I found all the girls in the city wearing less, or more exposed than before (I looked back with regret: I should not have had the autism), then again the question sprang into my mind: what's going on in Guangzhou?