Havana's Chinatown | Lok Pok-chi

Photo © Lok Pok-chi - All Rights Reserved

I make it a daily habit to read the South China Morning Post, and was very interested in an article that appeared on its pages a few days ago. It tells us the story of Lok Pok-chi, a photographer born in Hong Kong and based in Kansas, who accidentally met Caridad Amaran, a 90-year old talented singer of Chinese opera in Havana.

When they met, she scrubbing oil off a Chinese printing press with a kerosene-soaked toothbrush. Ms. Amaran has been performing since childhood, and is still an active singer. She is one of the subjects featured in photographer Lau Pok-chi’s latest solo exhibition, “Chinese Diaspora”. I couldn't find a link to it, but I did locate a short video featuring Lok Pok-chi and her, (starting at 07:35) amongst other images of Havana.



For more on Lok Pok-chi, here's a link to his website.

To Live To Sing | Huo Zhe Chang Zhe

I was referred to a movie on Sichuan opera which, by all accounts, showcases the type of opera troupes I've been photographing over the course of the past 30 months. For my "Chinese Opera of the Diaspora" photo book, I eschewed documenting the glamorous well-funded troupes in Shanghai and Beijing in favor of the small impoverished 'hand-to-mouth' troupes that perform in Hong Kong, Penang, Kuala Lumpur and New York City's Chinatown.

The movie 'To Live To Sing' (活着唱着 Huo Zhe Chang Zhe) is directed by Johnny Ma, and is about Zhao Li, the manager of a small Sichuan Opera troupe, who lives and performs along her troupe in a rundown theatre located in the outskirts of Chengdu, China. When she receives the notice of demolition for the theatre, she hides the news from everyone, fearing that it would spell the end of her opera troupe, and the life of her “family”. As she struggles to find a new theatre for them to both sing and live in, the characters start to realize that soemthing is amiss.


The backdrop of the movie involves the Chinese push for modernization which hits the town of Chengdu, and it paints a stark picture of a country wresting with itself over its past and future. The cast includes members of a real-life Sichuan Opera troupe, whose real existence is threatened by urban redevelopment and dwindling audiences, as well as the easy money performers can make by reducing their art to magic stunts for the entertainment of tourists in cheap hot-pot restaurants.

It’s not really necessary to know anything about Sichuan Opera to appreciate an archetypal story about a troupe of traditional artists in the twilight years of their profession.

The story synopsis is as follows: the colorful troupe, seen initially touting for customers in full costume in the back of a motorbike pickup truck, lives and performs in a ramshackle, warehouse-like space in a run-down part of a Chinese city that is in the throes of modernization. Bulldozers have already begun smashing through surrounding houses and properties, and the theatre itself has been served with a demolition order which stern troupe owner and matriarch Zhao Li  is determined to fight. It doesn’t help that the company’s young star, Zhao Li’s strong-willed niece Dan Dan, is secretly moonlighting as a sexy nightclub torch singer, nor that the audiences who shuffle in dutifully to see the troupe’s nightly performances are all well past retirement age.

The director and camera shower love on the costumes, make-up, traditional wooden instruments, rough signage and makeshift props of this shoestring-budget world on the verge of extinction – and along with that stirring finale, this tender analogue devotion goes some way to making up for a story that is as thin as a stage curtain versions of themselves.*

* Edited and redacted from various movie reviews.

New Website | New Galleries

To start 2020, I put together a freshly baked website using my domain name of thetravelphotographer.net. I've used the services of Wix.com based on my previous experience with it, and because of the diversity of its templates. 

The website is dedicated to my photographic work of China which include recent projects which, for now, consist of Chinoiseries and Chinese Opera. While the latter is self-explanatory, Chinoiserie is defined as a "style of ornamentation current chiefly in the 18th century in Europe, characterized by intricate patterns and an extensive use of motifs identified as Chinese". I used the term to showcase my fashion-historical storytelling work involving cheongsam or qi pao clad models. The overriding theme in the Chinoiserie gallery is that of a "Shanghai-1930" atmosphere which I seek to recreate.

Each photograph in the Chinoiseries section carries the title of a fashion-historical story; some of which are 'photo-films' and are found on my other website https://thetravelphotographer.exposure.co/ and on my Vimeo site.  The website also features a number of Chinese opera related galleries and street photography in Hong Kong, Taipei, Tokyo and naturally New York City.

The Travel Photographer's 2019 Selection

As the year comes to a close, I look back at 20 photographs; a selection which remind me the most of the moments when i pressed the shutter. I certainly do not claim these are the best amongst my work, but they exemplify -to me- what I enjoy to do as a photographer.

The 20 photographs are listed in no preferential sequence. They combine street photography, fashion and cultural images.

The first is of Ren Li Fung; a friend in Shanghai, who appeared in many of my fashion-cultural multimedia galleries. Here she's wearing regular clothes, rather than a quintessential Chinese qi pao. We had scheduled a photo shoot in Qi Bao, the famed water town near Shanghai, one of my favorite locations.

From the ensuing photo shoot, I produced The Butterfly And The Teahouse; the story of Hu Die, a legendary Chinese actress in the 1920-1930s. 

The second photograph is of two Hokkien opera performers exchanging what appeared to be high-intensity gossip. This image was made during the Hungry Ghost festival in Kowloon. The backstages of Chinese operas are a trove of impromptu and candid scenes which I delighted in documenting over the course of the past two years. This image and many more appear in my soon-to-be- published "Chinese Opera of the Diaspora" photo book. 

In the meantime, I produced a photo gallery titled "The Hungry Ghost festival" which showcases the vibrancy of this annual religious event.

The blissful facial expression on her face on having her first cup of hot tea of the morning was infectious, and I enjoyed mine almost as much. We were in Zhujiajiao, a delightful water town established about 1,700 years ago and a magnet for photographers for its 36 bridges. We had traveled early from Shanghai to avoid the later crush of local tourists but the rain dampened our hopes for any sustained photo shoots on the banks of its river.

I spent a couple of days in Shanghai's Marriage Market at the People's Square. This was purely a photojournalistic endeavor with street photography overtones. Every Saturday and Sunday since 1996, this popular gathering provides parents (and grandparents) the opportunity to advertise their unmarried children by posting their vital statistics such age, height, educational qualifications and work history. One of the most striking image is that of a marriage broker who presumably received the news that the match she had arranged was successful, and she would get her commission. 

I chose to post process the resulting photographs in monochrome to give them a documentary feel, and more of them can be viewed at The Marriage Market.

In the main touristic spots in different cities across China, pre-wedding photoshoots can very frequently be seen, since they've become the must-have for every Chinese couple before their marriage. However, Chinese people often have day-long photo sessions much before their actual weddings. Sometimes it can be half a year or even a year in advance of the ceremony. It's predicted that the value of the pre-wedding photo shoot industry may reach millions of US dollars by the end of 2019. 

No longer content with black and white pictures, this bride -as many others- dressed in a magnificent red dress (in all likelihood rented for the day) was posing near the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. Most probably, she and her husband to be could've traveled from one of China's provinces especially for this photo shoot.

A Hokkien opera actress breaking into laughter on seeing me in the backstage is one of my favorite candid photographs, and has earned its place amongst the many others in my  in my soon-to-be- published "Chinese Opera of the Diaspora" photo book. I am still unsure what provoked her to laugh. Her partner seems puzzled as well. The majority of the Chinese opera actors I photographed were exceedingly welcoming and hospitable, however few were as amused as she was by my presence. The show was during the Hungry Ghost festival in Kowloon. 

Another gallery of Chinese opera is The Unseen; a collection of monochromatic images of a Hokkien opera troupe in Malaysia.

This is the only image in the selection that doesn't have any humans in it. It's of  Xinchang Ancient Town viewed through a restaurant's round window. 

Xinchang is an ancient water town with about 100 folk houses of different sizes that were built during the Ming (1368 - 1644 AD) and Qing (1644 - 1911 AD) dynasties. The old streets, the rivers that pass through the town, the stone arch bridges, and folk houses form a typical picture in China’s Yangtze River Delta. The glass diffraction added another layer to the timeless feel of the town.

The eighth image of the selection is of Ren Li Fung, who posed for my camera at the water town of Zhuijiajiao. Although we had photo shoots all over the small town, this one was indoors in its tiny museum. We were nervous because we were not supposed to use any of its rooms as backgrounds (though there were no signs posted prohibiting photography). I used the side opening of a typical Chinese canopy bed to frame her in the ambient light.

For more of Ren Li Fung, I've produced a multimedia slideshow titled "The Legend of Hua", which tells the story of a Hua, a women wronged by an unfaithful lover, who returns as a ghost to seek revenge.

Another of my favorite images was made in the old teahouse in Qi Bao. The Qi Bao teahouse consists of a large tea room with about six or seven square tables, an outdoor courtyard whose walls are covered with posters of handwritten calligraphy, and an inner large hall where traditional pinghua/pingtan singing-story telling shows are performed between12:30 and 2:00 pm.

This dapper gentleman is a regular patron, and tried to discourage me from photographing him. He had a small transistor radio on the table next to him, and would furiously scribble in a notebook. I took him to be a journalist; retired like most of the other patrons, who couldn't shake the habit of writing. He might have been anything at all of course, but my image of him pleased me. When I returned to the teahouse a few months later, he was at the same table and cracked a very thin smile when I gave him a few prints of his photographs. He even managed to whisper a "xie xie".

I produced a monochromatic photo gallery of The Old Qi Bao Teahouse, and produced a large landscape image wrap photo book by the same name.

I spent a day at Beijing's famous Panjiyuan market, photographing mostly from the hip and jostling against the crowds that come to find a deal or a rare artifact. It dates back to the late days of the declining Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) when many destitute members of the aristocracy and officials brought their antiques to the street in the cover of night to sell. To avoid gossip, they lit up a lantern to sell their antiques at night. 

I was particularly drawn to the indoor section of the market where the booksellers had their lockers, and spread their offerings. Second hand books, including Mao's Litle Red Book and posters of his likeness, as well as books of poetry and old photographs were there to be sold.

I put together a photo gallery of images made during my time at this unique market titled Panjiyuan. 

Deng Li is a fashionista, an artist and has a small store in Beijing's Dashanzi Art District which is also known as Art Zone 798. Although I mistook her for being Tibetan, she's Han Chinese from Chongqing. She has a lot of presence which is what interested me in photographing her. She uses old embroidery on the tunics and on the dresses she sells; all of which are one-of-a-kind. We had difficulty communicating and I found her to be rather enigmatic. All of the images I made of her were in her tiny store which was crowded with her clothing inventory, her artwork of large oil paintings and sculptures...interspersed with vases, plants  and Buddhas.

The twelfth photograph in this selection is of three cast members of a Hokkien opera troupe preparing themselves before appearing in a show to celebrate the Hungry Ghost festival in Hong Kong's Kowloon. It's reminiscent of an oil painting because of the penumbra and the dim light reflected on their white tunics. The opera troupes live in close proximity of each other during the months they spend performing at various venues, and they bond together as members of a single family. There's a lot of camaraderie between them, and the spirit of cooperation and mutual assistance is very high. Life would be very difficult for them if that spirit was not present and engendered.

I produced a photo gallery titled Entertaining The Gods which includes images made during the Hungry Ghost festival in Hong Kong.

The tattoo'ed man walking with his companion on Mott street during the feast of San Gennaro is the only non-China photograph in this selection.  Every September since 1926, in honor of the San Gennaro, patron saint of Naples, the Little Italy section of Lower Manhattan becomes alive with people, enjoying the sounds and food of Italy. Now in it's 93rd year, the festival attracts more than a million people annually to the streets of Little Italy. Mainly tourists come to witness the festivities, eat Italian food and while the carnival games are usually rigged, it doesn't stop them from being fun.

The monochromatic photo gallery is titled "The Feast of San Gennaro".

An extremely enjoyable photo shoot took place at the Shanghai Film Park in Chendun that had sets of urban 1930 Shanghai. A day of work with Tian Yiyi and with the help of Yimu, I produced a short multimedia slideshow based on the life of Ruan Ling-Yu, a silent film star of the 1930s in her native China. She was known for a charismatic on-screen presence and a tragic off-screen life. One of the most prominent Chinese film stars of the 1930s, her exceptional acting ability and suicide at the age of 24 led her to become an icon of Chinese cinema. Moreover, her life story was portrayed by the sublime Maggie Cheung in the 1991 movie Centre Stage.

Along a gallery of images of Tian Yiyi titled "The Ingenue", there's also the monochromatic multimedia slideshow "The Immortal".

Another 'behind-the-scenes' image of the close ties that bond the cast members of Chinese -in this case, Hokkien- operas. I was struck by the 'sisterhood' exhibited by these two female actors and by their obvious affection for each other. In a conversation before the show, they were sitting very close to one another, and on seeing me photographing them, the one on the right hugged her sister or companion. I felt they wanted me to record their friendship, and unfortunately I neglected to ask for their WeChat handles to send it to them.

This image is featured in my soon to be published photo book "Chinese Opera of the Diaspora".

More of my photographs of Chinese opera can be viewed at "Behind The Curtain."

Another image from Shanghai's Marriage Market made the selection. Here, what drew me to these two women was their earnest expressions. The one on the right had an anxious expression -almost like a supplicant- while the other was more relaxed. I felt it was an ongoing negotiation; perhaps over the amount of a dowry should the marriage be agreed to. Most of the unmarried offsprings are in the dark about their parents' activities, and would be utterly mortified at the meddling in their love affairs.

More of these images are at "The Marriage Market".

Melody (aka Xin) and Agnes were at Beijing's Forbidden Palace being photographed by their friend Eddy Leung, and after obtaining their permission, I gladly joined in the opportunity. They are from Guangzhou, the capital and most populous city of the province of Guangdong in southern China and were visiting the nation's capital during the long holiday. They are wearing Qing dynasty dresses which they presumably had rented for the occasion. Melody spoke perfect English, and told me that she is proud of the nation's heritage. She often dresses up in historical costumes/dresses in her home town.

A collection of my photographs of people in Chinese costumes can be viewed at "Chinoiseries of Beijing".

From my photo gallery titled "The One-Yuan Teahouse" is one of the portrait of Pan Pingfu, the owner of the teahouse. I had traveled from Shanghai to the thousand-year-old Digang Village (荻港村); a small village near the Grand Canal; the watery artery that runs which runs 1200 miles from Beijing to Hangzhou. This modest and sleepy village with black-tile-roofed houses is home to Juhuayuan (聚华园) teahouse which has been here for more than a century, a relic from the past.

It is where customers can sit for the entire day from as early as 3 am, spending only 1 yuan ( about $0.15) for the cost of black tea, boiled water, a table and a chair.

The final selected image is of a cast member of a Hokkien opera troupe applying makeup foundation to his face. I was surprised to see him in August this year, after having seen and photographed him during last year's Hungry Ghost festival at a different Kowloon venue. The makeup sessions take an inordinate amount of time especially as the actors have to self-apply it. They have to learn it as they learn to act, move, sing and speak.

For more on the Hokkien opera during Hungry Ghost festivals, drop by "The Hungry Ghost festival" photo gallery.

Aga Szydlik | Singapore's Street Opera

Photo © Aga Szydlik | All Rights Reserved

Readers of The Travel Photographer blog know of my current long term involvement in documenting Chinese Opera of the diaspora; an involvement that will culminate into the production of a coffee-table book bearing the same title. It is for this reason that the blog has been recently populated with posts with excellent work of Chinese opera by travel and documentary photographers.

Aga Szydlik's Wyang: Singapore's Street Opera work is one of those. Her close-up portraits of the opera actors are striking by their unvarnished look.

The earliest description of wayang in Singapore dates all the way back to the mid-1800s. For more than a century, jiexi (street opera in Mandarin) enthralled more audience than any other form of live entertainment. 

At one point, the flourishing scene supported over a hundred professional troupes that staged thousands of shows each year. Some of them even had their own dedicated venues in the city state's Chinatown.

However, now only about 10 professional street opera troupes are left in Singapore, drawing an ever-smaller audience of elderly people. The decline of street opera in Singapore was caused by its government's policy to replace dialects (such as Hakka, Hokkien et al) with Mandarin, and the slow erosion of its audience. The spread of television, movies and social media platforms exacerbated the disinterest of the younger generation in this ancient art form.

Aga Szydlik is a professional culture photographer and a doctoral candidate based in South Africa. She tells us that her journey with photography started with Muay Thai (the famous Thai fight style) which she documented extensively. Based in Thailand, she able to explore South East Asia, onwards to Indonesia and South Africa. She is enthusiastic about alternative processes, analogue photography, Lomography and salt/albumin prints as well as mixed media.

The Diva | Using ON1's Black Background/Layer

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved

I'm one of those photographers that has a pathological dislike in being tethered to a computer, and spending more than fifteen minutes in post-processing an image is a task I just find intolerable. In some cases, I am naturally forced to...but I try to find ways and means to make it as simple as possible. 

In contrast with most of my peers, I seldom use Photoshop and have never used Lightroom. However, I rely on three post-processing/editing apps as my tools of choice...these are Color Efex Pro (originally of Google and now part of DxO Software, Iridient Developer (the raw image format processing software for macOS, and well known for its ability to process Fujifilm X-Trans raw files), and lastly ON1 Photo Raw ( a raw processor, photo editor and plug-in collection all in one).

Which editing app to choose and use depends on the processing I seek for the image I'm working on. With this blog post I will very briefly explain how I created a black background to the photograph of Gui Lian, the Hokkien Opera diva, who I met during her performances in Georgetown (Penang Island, Malaysia).

The original photograph (below) was cropped to a square format, and I used ON1 Photo Raw to process it as a first step.

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved

I wanted to black out the extraneous shimmering stage curtains and red tassels, and found such a task not too difficult nor time consuming using ON1's Quick Mask tool. Naturally, one has to create a separate black underlay which will be one of the image layers.

Once a black image is created, I clicked on File> Add Layer(s) From File, and used the Quick Mask tool (yellow arrow on left) to "paint" a line around Gui Lian. The Quick Mask tool wasn't sufficiently precise in blacking out all of the targeted areas, so I also used the Masking Brush tool (red arrow) and went over these areas on complete the task....a task that took me no more than 12 minutes; well within my range of tolerance. I then pumped up the saturation using Iridium Developer tools...a task that took under a minute.

Amongst the reasons I favor ON1 is its website which has many easy to understand and follow tutorials. For those wanting to learn how easy it is to use its layer tools, it has product training videos here.

POV | The Character Actors of Chinese Opera | GFX50s

Actor In Teochew Opera (Hong Kong)
 Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved

As no doubt readers of this blog have known for quite a while, I've been working on building an inventory of photographs of the various types of Chinese opera performances and backstages which eventually will be featured in the production of a coffee-table photo book "Chinese Opera of the Diaspora". 

So far, I've photographed a number of performances at different venues ranging from New York City's Chinatown, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, and Penang...most of which were held during Chinese festivals. I hope to do the same in Taipei and Bangkok later this year and early next.

Setting aside the eye-catching aesthetics of the costumery, the beauty of the performers, the intricacy of the facial makeups and the "live-in" atmosphere of the shows' backstages, I thought I'd share two of my environmental portraits made in the backstages of Chinese opera shows in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur.

These two portraits are of elderly actors; the type that the cinematic world calls' "character actors" (these are generally defined as supporting actors who play unusual, interesting, or eccentric characters). I found these actors to be much more visually interesting than the glamorous divas; not because of their rugged and wrinkled physiognomies but because they had presence...and must've been part of these troupes for as long as they could remember.

Actor In Hokkien Opera (Kuala Lumpur)
 Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved

Although neither of these actors took the roles of "leading men" or "warriors" in the operas, they seemed comfortable in their skin to do less strenuous roles such as the elderly scholars, judges and other supporting roles.

Unfortunately, due the language barriers I wasn't able to interview either of these two actors to gain an insight on their lives and background. They also seemed reluctant to allow me more than a few minutes to photograph them, either because they were waiting to perform (as in the top photograph) or just uncomfortable with the the attention of a stalking photographer (lower photograph).

Both photographs were made with the fabulous Fuji GFX50s, the medium format mirrorless camera. Technical details are:

Top photograph: GFX50s. GF45mmF2.8 R WR Lens. 1/25th. f2.8. iso 800. Aperture Priority. September 4, 2018.

Lower photograph: GFX50s. GF 63mm f/2.8 R WR . 1/30th. f5.6. iso 800. Spot Metering. October 20, 2017. 

The top photograph was made during a Teochow opera performance at the King George V Memorial Park (Kowloon) during the Hungry Ghost festival.

The lower photograph was made during a Hokkien opera performance at the Tokong Kau Ong Yah temple (Ampang, Kuala Lumpur) during the Nine Emperor Gods festival.

Michael Wolf | Portraits Of Cantonese Opera Stars

Photo © Michael Wolf | All Rights Reserved

Continuing my obsession with Chinese Opera, and showcasing photographers who have superlative work involving this ancient art, I am delighted to feature the work of Michael Wolf titled Portraits of Cantonese Opera Stars.

In this creative approach, Michael Wolf photographed locally celebrated opera performers by having them pose in front of Hong Kong buildings in their costumes, and adopting poses used during their performances. The old Hong Kong neighborhoods and its crowded streets added interesting -almost incongruous- backdrops to the portraits.

Photo © Michael Wolf | All Rights Reserved

A few years ago, some of these portraits were also installed (see top photo) in the grounds of the West Kowloon Bamboo Cinema; a temporary project designed to provide spectators with performances at nominal prices. Cantonese opera performed in the setting of a bamboo cinema is a traditional art form combining music, martial arts, drama and architecture.

Michael Wolf is a German photographer based in Hong Kong. His main work's focus is life in mega cities, and documents architecture and the culture of metropolises.  He worked for 8 years as contract photographer for Stern magazine, but since 2001, he has concentrated on his own projects; many of which have been published as books.

His work was exhibited in numerous locations, including the Venice Bienniale for architecture, Aperture gallery in New York,  Hong Kong Shenzhen Biennial, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and others.

He won first prize in the World Press Photo award competition on two occasions (2005 & 2010) and honorable mention (2011). He was also shortlisted for the Prix Pictet photography prize. He has published more than 13 photo books. 

Mindy Tan | Teochew Opera

“As long as the Chinese shrines exist and people continue praying, any Chinese Opera can survive”

Continuing my obsession with Chinese Opera (and for photographers who show work that resembles mine), I discovered the lovely work of Mindy Tan who produced a video-slideshow of her images of a Teochow (aka Chiu Chow) opera troupe called Sai Yong Hong.

The Sai Yong Hong Chinese opera troupe has been performing in the Bangkok area for over 10 years. Considered as the most well known Chinese Opera troupe in the country, Sai Yong Hong has 34 actors in total. Five members come from China and the remaining 29 actors are from Thailand. There are about 20 Chinese opera troupes in Thailand, but they are reputed to be the most professional.

There are almost 10 million Thai Chinese in Thailand, making it one the largest Chinese communities in the diaspora, however the opera is not as popular as it once was.

Chiu Chow opera is a traditional art form with more than 500 years history, and is currently enjoyed by 20 million Chiu Chow people in many regions and countries. Based on local folk dances and ballads, this type of opera formed its own style under the influence of Nanxi Opera; one of the oldest Chinese operas and originated in the Song Dynasty, and originated in southern China's Chaoshan region. Clowns and females are the most distinctive characters of its shows, as well as fan-play and acrobatic skills.

Mindy Tan is a documentary and Street photographer focusing on Singapore and other Asian countries. Mindy began her career as a newspaper journalist. She won the Society of Publishers Asia (SOPA) award for excellence in Human Rights Reporting in 2007, before becoming a successful commercial and documentary photographer.

She worked for brands like Shell, Uniqlo, Mini Cooper and Huawei, and produces commissioned work for various editorial clients including Reuters, the Associated Press and Die Zeit.

An ambassador to Fujifilm on its international team of X-photographers, she has exhibited with Fujifilm in Cologne, and presented at Fujikina 2017, in both Kyoto and Tokyo. She is currently on artist residency with the Exactly Foundation.

The Hungry Ghost Festival | Hong Kong

scroll down on the right....or click The Hungry Ghost Festival.

Following my earlier post on the Hungry Ghost festival in Hong Kong, I am now publishing my own gallery of the festival...with an interesting explanation as to the reason for street Chinese Operas starting and ending their performances with a sacred baby wooden doll.

It is one of the most popular rituals for the street operas, and is called the rite of "The Heavenly Consort Presents a Child" where the Heavenly Consort (one of the Seven Fairies) in the person of a made-up and costumed actress, who descends from the stage, bearing her "child", Hai Ji, represented by a wooden doll in her arms. The doll is dressed in red, and represents the godly essence of theatre in a wooden image.

During my few days at the site of the Hungry Ghost festival in Kowloon, I and a Hong Kong-based friend Ms Laura Donini-Rafee, met with a handful of volunteer officials, who were not only glad to see me as a non-Chinese photographer, but proceeded to quiz me on the tradition and helpfully correcting my insufficient knowledge. 

Posing with Mr Ma and Mr Cheung, officials at the Hungry Ghost festival (Kowloon)
Photo © Laura Donini-Rafee

While the Hungry Ghost Festival has weathered decades of decline, it's been sustained by grassroots sustenance from the tight-knit Chiu Chow communities in Hong Kong and beyond. Hong Kong has a very large number of Chiu Chow (or Teochew) people and their intense sense of kinship created powerful Chiu Chow networks across the Southeast Asian region.

The Chiu Chow community are responsible for over half of the 100 celebrations that take place around Hong Kong. Whatever their origin, each of these Hungry Ghost rituals serve similar purposes: to pay homage to the gods and ancestors, to sooth wandering spirits, to care for the living by giving away goods, to bring good luck to the neighborhood and to join people together.

Gary 'Gaz' Jones | Hungry Ghost Festival

Photo © Gary Jones | All Rights Reserved

Readers of this blog know full well of my current 'obsession' (photographically-speaking) with Chinese Opera and its various incarnations, especially when performed during religious festivals and events.

I've posted a number of posts on this blog on the Hungry Ghosts festival during my recent trips to Penang (Malaysia) and Hong Kong...so it's with pleasure that I found the lovely work of Gary 'Gaz' Jones documenting Chinese Opera actors and performers during the festival in his city of Hong Kong.

A combination of color and monochrome images in his gallery Hungry Ghost Festival show us the versatility of these actors, and the various roles and types of make-up. 

Equally interesting is Sunset Survivors; a book project in which Mr Jones is involved along with its writer, Ms Lindsay Varty. The book tells the stories of Hong Kong’s traditional tradesmen and women through imagery and interviews. It covers a number of curious professions that are quickly falling into obscurity, from fortune telling to face threading and letter writing to bird cage making in the streets of old Hong Kong.

For those interested, here's the South China Morning Post article that includes a sample of the photographs and interviews.

Gary Jones has lived in Hong Kong since 1990. He has been in the creative business since 1978, working as a designer and creative director both in London and Hong Kong. He currently runs his own creative consultancy in the city, which he set up in 1992. Fascinated by photography from his years at Art College in Hull, Gary now specializes in food, portrait and documentary photography, predominantly in black and white, using both film and digital cameras. He is a member of the Royal Photographic Society and holds an LRPS Distinction.

The Unseen | Backstage of a Hokkien Opera

The Unseen is a gallery of monochrome photographs made backstage of a Hokkien Opera troupe during Penang's Hungry Ghosts Festival. 

Chinese opera - in all its various types - is known for the saturated colors of the actors/performers make-up and flamboyant costumes, but I chose to process my photographs in monochrome/black and white to avoid the facile seduction of color, and to accentuate the facial and body characters of the individuals depicted in them. 

The title of the gallery 'The Unseen' obviously refers to the backstage activities of this particular Hokkien opera troupe. It was obvious to me whilst photographing that there was a strong cohesiveness amongst its members who -in essence - live and work cheek to jowl. The Hokkien opera troupe hails from the Chinese south-western province of Fujian, and some live in Zhangzhou city which is about 450 kilometers from Hong Kong. 

The formal name of the troupe is “Southern Fujian Opera”. The members flew in from China to Penang on July 20 and will return in December, spending almost 5 months away from their families. Annually, during the seventh lunar month, makeshift stages made of old wood planks and bamboo scaffolding appear all in certain locations in Penang. It is on these stages that Chinese opera performances are held every night. 

Two types of operas are held in Penang; in the Hokkien and Teochew (aka Chiu Chow) dialects. The Hungry Ghost Festival, known as Yu Lan, is a traditional Buddhist and Taoist festival held in a number of Asian countries; many of which have large Chinese communities. 

According to traditional Chinese belief, the seventh month in the lunar calendar is when restless spirits roam the earth. It is believed the gates of hell are open throughout the Hungry Ghost Month. It is believed many hungry and wayward ghosts come to visit the living. Many Chinese people make efforts to appease these transient ghosts, while ‘feeding’ their own ancestors. As entertainment for these ghosts, Chinese operas are performed in public places and alongside temples. 

The annual observance of the festival stems from the tale of Maudgalyâyâna, a disciple of the Buddha said to have saved his mother from the harrows of hell with ritual chants. The story spread rapidly through local opera performances under the outward-looking Tang dynasty (618-907), when Buddhism peaked in the Middle Kingdom thanks to imperial patronage and deepening cultural and trade links with South Asia. 

The Hungry Ghost Festival is officially listed as part of China’s intangible cultural heritage.

Beyond The Frame | Guo Gui Lian | The Diva

(Guo Gui Lian as Xu Wen Jen)
Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved 

I spent around a week in Penang during the latter part of August while the Chinese Yu Lan (Hungry Ghosts) Festival was being celebrated in various sites on the island. My purpose was to photograph the Chinese opera shows -and their backstages- that are an integral feature of the festival, in order to glean material for my work-in-progress photo book "Chinese Opera of the Diaspora".

(My black & white photo gallery The Unseen takes you behind the stage's curtain of this talented troupe).

One of the two main sites where Yu Lan rituals where to be held was Lim Jetty in an area called Pengkalan Weld. It's the site for the famous Sun Moon Temple dedicated to the Lim Tai Cor deity, the Lim clan patron deity. The Chinese opera (in this case, Hokkien) would be performing there on a makeshift stage of wood and thick bamboo.

The troupe performing on that stage was the “Southern Fujian Opera”, whose 16 members are mostly from this Chinese southeastern province. As I speak no Chinese, I initially communicated with Abao, one of the two male actors, using a translating app...and was able to obtain a few introductory nuggets of information, however it was with Guo Gui Lin, a lovely actress with whom I connected on stage and subsequently on WeChat on my return to New York City, that I was able to get additional information on the troupe and herself.

(Guo Gui Lian as one of the military generals)

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved 

Guo Gui Lian is a 30 years old single mother with a son. She hails from the port city of Zhangzhou (漳州) in Fujian. She started her career at 18 along with her sister. Her parents are farmers, and she has four siblings back home.

Through ensuing WeChat conversations, I gathered interesting -albeit sometimes conflicting- details about her troupe's involvement in the Yu Lan Festival. She arrived in Penang with the “Southern Fujian Opera” troupe on July 20 and will return to China in December. They traveled by ship from Fujian to Brunei for two weeks' shows; the sea trip took a day. It was then a flight to Penang to perform during the Hungry Ghosts festival month, and in other venues in Malaysia till year end.

Guo Gui Lian has no favorite roles. Her versatility allows her to take parts of heroic warriors, evil people, elderly and wise scholars, young boys and more. I noticed that no actor has a set role...but there are a handful who seem to take the leading roles, while others take supporting ones. Lian is one of three who took martial roles, which include some spear-sword sparring.

(Guo Gui Lian as Zhao Qing) 

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved 

The troupe's costumes, headgear and various accoutrements are stored in Penang; presumably by the temple authorities, until it returns the following year. The amount of these items as seen backstage precludes traveling back and forth with them on flights....so I gathered they initially traveled by boat. The troupe's manager is paid by the temple(s) and provides lodging for the performers and their salaries. The actors, sound and stage hands are paid for each show...so if there's no performance, my understanding is that they do not get paid, although I may be mistaken.

Brought by Chinese traders, Chinese opera arrived in Malaysia in the mid-16th century, and was very popular in the late 19th century. Nowadays, this ancient art form appears to be largely ignored and/or unknown by the younger generations, although efforts are made to repopularize it in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong...especially during the Chinese festivals.

(Guo Gui Lian as Xu Wen Jen)

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved 

In Penang, Lian and her Southern Fujian Opera troupe performed its shows in Hokkien; the Chinese dialect of the south-eastern part of Fujian Province and Taiwan, and spoken widely by the Chinese diaspora in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and other parts of Southeast Asia.

Hokkien opera is one of the most influential art forms in Malaysia and Singapore. This regional genre originated from Taiwan and flourished in Fujian. Of the more than 300 types of Chinese opera, only about eight varieties made it to Southeast Asia, the most popular ones being Chiu Chow (or Teo Chow), Cantonese, Peking and Hokkien.

The Southern Fujian Opera Troupe
Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved

Beyond The Frame | Yan Yang Tian Troupe | GFX 50s

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved

Although the Fuji GFX50s might not really be the most appropriate format to photograph theatre and opera, it produced interesting images while using it to photograph a live performance by the Yan Yang Tian opera troupe in

at the  Leng Eng Tian Khiew Ong Tai Tay temple in Kuala Lumpur during the annual Taoist Nine Emperor Gods Festival. 

For nine days, Taoists gather at various temples around the country to celebrate the Nine Emperor Gods festival, which begins on the eve of the ninth month of the lunar calendar.

The troupe performs traditional Cantonese opera, and has been on stage since its founder opera troupe owner Elizabeth Choy was 7 years old. Now in her late eighties, she is considered a treasure by the Chinese-Malay communities in Malaysia as well as those in neighboring countries.

While the popularity of Cantonese opera has dwindled, especially among the young, her troupe has continued to perform in local and international venues. She has led her troupe to perform throughout Malaysia and in other countries such as Vietnam, Hong Kong and Thailand. Sparing no expense, she sourced many of her opera’s lavish-looking costumes from Guangzhou, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Accompanied by Stanley Hong and Mizuki Kato, I photographed the performers while they applied intricate makeup and donned their costumes in the back stage of the specially erected structure. Used to photographers, they seemed  oblivious of cameras being pointed at them; even when lenses were almost poking their necks to get their reflections in mirrors.

For those interested in gear: The technical details for the photograph are: Fuji GFX50s+ 63mm. 1/1000th sec Hand Held. f2.8. iso 800. Spot Metering. Date: 2017-10-20 at 20:48:80 (Malaysia time). Post Processed Iridient Developer 3.