London Street Photography Series: The Red Lantern Of Chinatown Photograph

To walk into the dazzling jamboree of colours and exotic aromas of the bustling narrow streets of London’s Chinatown is to in effect one signing an obituary wherein the concept of monotony is exiled forever into oblivion. Wooden-beamed street-side stalls overfilled with all manner of vegetables and fruits, wafting plumes of steam from freshly prepared noodles and dumplings and, all the while, fast-paced and unintelligible exchange of conversations boomeranged between vendor and customer - no doubt a dogged quibble was over negotiations for a reasonable price – were quite suffice in creating the hallucination that I had somehow managed to travel to a town in the east. The bi-lingual street names only furthered the illusion of miraculous teleportation! What took hypnotic grip of my visual faculties, however, were the spectacular theatrics of the red and gold Chinese lanterns decorated with tassels that swayed and tinkled in the breeze. I have always loved lanterns of all kinds since I was a girl. There is something deeply comforting about them, perhaps, unlike the bare-bodied candle, the light within a lantern is proffered a blessing of shelter from snuffing winds by token of its embracing armour of paper shell. These lanterns floated high above, strung on string in criss-cross style from building to building. Much of the time my eye was trained upwards, absorbing the deep red and streaks of gold until finally I ended up with a silly neck strain at which point I searched for a red lantern on a more comfortable eye-level and, after a bit of prowling, I found one that looked on me like an old friend I hadn’t seen in years! It was hung outside a little Chinese souvenir shop. A blazing riot of colourful trinkets winked at me from baskets placed by the door and window including a whole forge of sparkling golden, white and black lucky cats whose arms waved back and forth which I knew meant bestowed the owner with luck, wealth and prosperity. I found myself quickly falling for them and without wasting another minute stepped inside. What a wondrous cave of millions of tiny pieces twinkled in front of me – miniature jade Buddhas, bamboo-handled teapots, incense sticks, wooden swords to name just a few. The gently-spoken Chinese elder who had been sat behind the till came up to me and we spoke at length about the traditional significance attached to the many animal figurines in the pantheon of Chinese mythology. It was a pleasure beyond reckoning to learn things from this wise chap that I had not read up on before in any book. As I paid up and put my lucky cat in my bag the old man caringly dispensed a word of warning about pickpocketing in the area and that I should be vigilant at all times. He spoke to me with the same sweet assertiveness as my father had once done to me. I thanked him with all my heart and told him that I’d hope to meet him again someday. Carrying not only my lucky cat but a plum moon smile on my face, I stepped out once again into the clamour of the street, a commendable imitation of a distant city fragrant in mystery and exoticism and my heart, well, it was as light and glowing as the bouncy red sun of a Chinese paper lantern… © Masufa Khatun | Mazzy Khatun Photo Stories | London Chinatown | UK 2014

Photography:Color on Other

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:19.7 W x 31.5 H x 0.4 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.