Today, I’m visiting Zhengyi Old Street (正仪老街) in Kunshan — a city wedged in between Suzhou and Shanghai. This old street is like a leftover slice in between other parts properly planned by the city. On the horizon, I can see construction cranes, as if they are threatening the area; ‘we are coming to you next’. The street runs alongside a river, with a highway in the south, and two railways in the north. Both the green-skinned train as well as the high-speed train whizz past, so often in fact that I’m reminded of The Blues Brothers scene: “How often does the train go by? So often you won’t even notice.”
Taking good photos today isn’t made easy, as there’s some fog mingled with the abysmal air quality of the last few days. Everything is grey and the sensor in my phone camera doesn’t stretch the colors across its full spectrum, plus the tints shift depending on which zoom I use.
To take photos is to pick a focus, to highlight things and leave out others. Therefore, there’s always some dishonesty to it. For example, when I can, I’ll leave out security cameras, or trash bins — trying to get a cleaner image than reality actually provides. I’ll either wait until there are no people visible in the photo, or for bystanders to stand on an interesting spot. I may even take it as far as merging two shots taken from the same point to have zero people in it, or put two people in it. (But I won’t use generative AI.)
A photo can capture the essence of a location, but it can also distort it. A few years ago, we visited Huojuba Street (火炬八街) in Weihai, and I still remember how interesting it looked online, and how in reality, you could see the three spots where the popular photos were taken; and once there, you saw how disappointing the rest of the place was. So I don’t think there is something like an honest photo, it’s just the degree of dishonesty that is different — and how far you want to go with it.
And maybe visiting here is not too different. I choose to visit this street, picking a peek into a different China — as if I’m looking into a diorama. I don’t like shopping malls because they all look the same, and I’ve also done plenty of exploration around our home already. By putting my focus here, I also leave out other things. I’m seeing this exact place in Kunshan — and that is perhaps the purpose of a diorama, to block out the world and look into this microcosm, frozen in time.
