“For me, the Street of Plain Happiness is the traditional morning market in Northeast China.
When I was a child, I felt like I could find everything here –lots of delicious food and lots of joy. The people running street vendors are resilient and interesting. In the winter, with temperatures dropping to minus twenty or thirty degrees Celsius, the morning market has hardly ever stopped for decades.
I used an Olympus-PenF half-frame film camera to take these photos in September 2019. In three years that followed, after many closures and lockdowns because of COVID-19, the warmth and vibrancy faded away. The ‘street’ came back after the pandemic. After surviving, I hope that people can live peacefully in an unknown place.
The backside of the book is adorned with traditional “spring couplets” written in calligraphy on a red background, depicting the most representative street scene of the morning market and reflecting the essence of urban culture. Unfolding the book on the table, the three-dimensional street model can be formed by standing the folded paper on both sides, presenting another perspective to tell the story of the morning market. Folding and unfolding it, you can feel the atmosphere of the Street of Plain Happiness, as if strolling through it.”
Text in Chinese.
“人间欢乐街,对我来说是东北的早市。
小时候觉得这里什么都有,很多好吃的,很多快乐;摆摊的人们在顽强生存着,每个人都很有意思,即使冬季零下二三十度,早市也几十年几乎没间断过。
这组照片使用Olympus-PenF半格胶片机拍摄于2019年9月。三个月后的三年间,很多次闭市和禁足后,人间烟火沉寂了,也许很多欢乐街就这么消失了。2023年它回来了,幸存之后,希望人们都能在不知处平安生活。 书本背面以红底黑字书法的居民春联为背景,结合立体结构设计,意在展示早市最有代表性的一段街景,也是城市文化的缩影。把书在桌面展开,通过折立两侧纸张形成三维街道模型,以另一种角度讲述早市的故事,翻折中感受欢乐街的氛围,好像漫步其中。”
“Street of Plain Happiness / 人間歡樂街 is part of a selection of books from Squeeze Sour, a distribution project founded by Lin Wang, inspired by one of Lin’s friends who works a delivery job while making photo books in China. Due to censorship and the cultural environment, self-publishing in China has become increasingly challenging, with fewer supporters. Squeeze Sour gathers China-based creators who rarely have the opportunity to express themselves. Our mission is to showcase these books to a wider audience and also to bring some fresh air to the US self-publishing community. Despite the constraints of our mundane world, I believe the tang of the squeezing process yields bittersweet yet rewarding outcomes.” -Squeeze Sour