It was the coldest January throughout China in nearly three decades. It was 2013 and I arrived in Beijing with my grandfather's Canon AE-1 with a 50mm lens and what film I had. At the time I did not know about street photography, I just liked walking around places and capturing life as it was happening. I had been taking photos all around New York City for the last year and I wanted to do the same thing while in China. Starting in Beijing I went to Xi'an, then Nanjing, then Shanghai. Along the way I would pop into random shops and pick up expired rolls of film. Only near Tiananmen Square was I able to get a few rolls of new Kodak Gold. Just like the US, China also had moved on from film. At one point I had a piece of paper that someone wrote characters on from a quick google search that, we thought, said "film". I would show that to people and then they would point in a direction--only once do I remember it actually working and even then it was a business that resembled more of a bank than a place that would sell film. After some searching they found some rolls in a random drawer in a desk, I believe I paid about 20 yuan for them. 

In 2025 I finally made a zine out of these images captured over 10 years prior. 

It is called, A January in China一月在中国