China Street Life #9
Jiuquan, China
2016
This guy and his wife (in the background) both seemed to think it was funny that I wanted to photograph them at their hardware shop. They started smiling when they first noticed me pointing my camera their way and didn’t stop the whole time I was there. He didn’t speak English (nor I Chinese), so I took the photo, thanked him, shook his hand and moved on.
Good picture – good story.
Thanks Mike. The Chinese people on the street were amazingly friendly and tolerant of my poking my camera their way. In fact it went beyond that. Especially when we were in the less touristy areas where as a rule few Westerners visit, people would stop me and greet me, take out their cell phones and ask me (via gestures since they typically did not speak English) to pose for a selfie with them. This happened routinely to other folks in our group as well. It made me change my attitude about how I feel about all the foreign tourists that keep showing up in our area!