China was just about to give first notice of a worrisome sanitary crisis being under way in Wuhan…
That 30th of December, weather appeared brilliant and beautiful, and I rested from work, so I took my Leica and decided to do a walking excursion to a beautiful hutong neighbourhood not far from home, which I had discovered by sheer chance months (or even years…?) before. I wanted to see it again.
As is usual in winter, beautiful weather inevitably meant northerly winds and, so, very intense cold. All in all, it was a highly enjoyable and photo-productive day, although it certainly left me frozen stiff.
The hutong, as quite a few more, had been almost totally demolished by then, though, as part of a series of harsh measures taken by he authorities after a horrific fire in another hutong area had killed quite a few people: old, impoverished hutongs were perceived now as too perilous concentrations of flammable stuff and needed to be disposed of for good and all…
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