ZHEJIANG, East China — At the entrance to his studio in Sandun Town, in Hangzhou’s northwestern Xihu District, Zhou Quanhu welcomed each guest with a handshake and a grin, a cigarette burning between his fingers.

Inside, the room filled with chatter, clinking tea cups, and laughter as friends shared old stories. Short and painfully thin, with salt-and-pepper whiskers and skin that stretched taut against his sharp cheekbones, he stood wrapped in four padded layers, moving from one person to the next, as though hosting a routine gathering. He was saying goodbye while he still could.

No somber music. No eulogies. No tears. The gathering felt less like a farewell to a man with late-stage lung cancer than an afternoon tea.

For 47 years, Zhou had devoted his life to keeping his photo studio alive. He had snapped photos of births, weddings, farewells, and anniversaries for generations in the community. Now, facing the end of his life, the 71-year-old talks about death with a smile.

“For my whole life, I’ve been the man behind the lens,” Zhou said, standing beside the memorial portrait he had chosen for himself. “Today, for the first time, I’m the one in the spotlight. My body may fail, but my spirit is strong. I’m proud of how I’ve lived my life.”

Dai Jun, a photographer who helped organize the party last October, first met Zhou two years ago while filming a documentary. When he called to arrange an interview, Zhou was gruff. “Come after three,” he told Dai. “I need my nap.”

“People who don’t know him think he’s difficult,” said Dai.

When Dai arrived, Zhou was sitting behind the counter, a black baseball cap shading his brow, looking like a guard on duty. “There’s nothing much to talk about,” Zhou said, before grudgingly opening up.

But Zhou’s customers recall a different side of him — how he would draw them into conversation, smile, listen, and nod, trying to understand them before ever lifting his camera.

“In a real portrait, character comes first. Beauty comes second,” Zhou said.

Zhou would model the poses himself, tilting his head, hiding half of his face with a curtain, or lifting his chin with his hand. Once his model had relaxed, he would quietly raise his Canon camera and capture the unguarded moment before they’d even realized what he’d done.

However, the warmth would disappear as soon as someone other than the model wandered in. “You — out,” he would say, lowering his camera and pointing to the door.

“Everyone has a moment when they shine,” Zhou said. “You can only capture it when nothing gets in the way — just the two of you, fully focused.”

At the end of the session, Zhou would carry the best photo to the wall, the surface crowded with hundreds of faces from the past four decades.

“These moments, these stories, are the only real wealth this studio and I have,” he said.

A photographer by chance

Born with dwarfism and into poverty, Zhou learned from his father to “work more and talk less.” He spent his early adulthood doing physical labor on a farm and working in a snack shop, never planning on becoming a photographer.

But when he was 25, he received an unexpected invitation to interview at Hangzhou’s famous Sandun Photo Studio.

Dozens applied. Zhou was the shortest and the quietest, often forgotten by others. And yet he was the one the master selected. Once inside the studio, he threw himself into the work.

In the late 1970s, film was costly and scarce, and every shutter press was important. Creating a portrait required immense precision.

Zhou would lift the dark cloth draped over the large-format camera and slip it over his head, sealing out the light. When the upside-down image slowly sharpened on the ground glass, the frosted screen at the back of the camera, he would slide in a sheet of film. Then, stepping out from under the cloth, he would squeeze the air bulb between his fingers. After a soft hiss and click, the moment would be captured forever.

When the negatives were developed, they were often flecked with tiny white spots. Zhou could spend an entire day bent over a single print, gently scraping each flaw away with a razor blade.

Zhou eventually took over the studio from his master. Before she left, Zhou finally plucked up the courage to ask her why she had chosen him all those years earlier. She smiled and said, “I needed someone reliable — someone who was careful with his hands and clear in his mind.”

It was then that Zhou realized that the traits others had overlooked — his quietness and patience — were precisely what the craft demanded.

Pushing through pain

Two years ago, Zhou was diagnosed with lung cancer.

Chemotherapy left him weak and shaky. “When the pain hits,” he said, “you wonder if you can bear being alive.”

But he wasn’t a quitter. He’d been through significant hurdles before, and didn’t want to abandon his studio when facing another now.

After taking over the studio, Zhou had quickly become a household name in the town. In the ’90s, neighbors would queue outside his small studio for ID photos, family portraits, and wedding pictures. Opening the shop at 7 a.m., he often wouldn’t close until late, earning more than he’d ever imagined.

But then digital cameras started to replace film. People no longer needed a studio to capture a moment. The stream of customers at his shop — once steady — dwindled to a trickle.

Zhou tried to adapt. He bought his first digital camera — a Canon he could barely afford — only to watch it get stolen by men who came into his shop, posing as customers before slipping it under a jacket and speeding off on a motorcycle.

He had even faced death before. One night, a man came into the studio, wrapped an arm around Zhou’s neck, pressed a knife to his throat, and demanded cash. Zhou broke free and survived, but the fear remained.

By the early 2010s, his master had passed away, his long-time colleague had retired, and the apprentice he had trained had returned home to get married. Zhou was the only one left to keep the lights on. He stayed anyway, in love with his craft.

Now, confronting death for the second time, he reluctantly closed the studio. “Anyone interested (in running the studio) — just give me a shout,” he posted on social media. “Keeping this old studio alive is all I want.”

A stranger-turned-successor

At 28, Cao Mengqi had been practicing amateur photography for years and was considering quitting her reporting job to pursue it full time.

She walked into Zhou’s studio on a rare day when he had the strength to open it for an hour or two. But the old man refused to look at her or answer her questions about portrait pricing. “Even a schoolkid could figure that out,” he snapped.

“If you talk to customers like that, how do you stay in business?” Cao asked.

Zhou finally looked up and met her gaze. Without another word, he walked to the back room and started setting up his camera.

Once the shoot began, the tension eased. They talked about lighting, lenses, and what a photo studio means in the age of digital cameras.

Before leaving, Cao left her number. Later, she jokingly asked him how much he wanted for rent.

“I’m not charging you for rent or electricity,” Zhou told her. “Try it for a few months. See if this place still has life.”

He handed her the keys and taped her phone number over the studio’s “Closed” sign.

When Cao asked why he would hand over the 60-year-old studio to someone he had only met once, Zhou shrugged. “I trust people,” he said. “There’s nothing here worth much anyway. If someone comes in and you take a good picture, the money’s yours.”

Zhou visited the studio whenever Cao needed assistance, teaching her how to position the lights, arrange the backdrops, and model the poses. He never scolded her for the mistakes. “That’s how you learn,” he told her. “If you take a bad picture, don’t charge for it.”

“My greatest wish”

At the goodbye party, Zhou sat in the front row with a cup of green tea, smiling and nodding as neighbors, friends, and relatives stepped up to speak about the man they loved. A neighbor characterized his world as “revolving around cameras, stocks, and antiques.” His nephew called him a “small person with big energy.”

“You have the courage I never had,” his older sister said, her eyes wet.

Cao spoke, too. “Zhou’s studio may be small,” she said, “but it holds a lifetime of memories for the people here.”

As the party wrapped up, only Zhou and Cao remained.

Zhou stood quietly as Cao taped a new print onto the wall, her photographs slowly covering the faded ones Zhou had hung decades ago. The setting sun cast its glow upon hundreds of portraits — some in black and white, some in color, some decades old, and some newly created.

Cao turned to him. “Do you have any last wishes?”

Zhou fell silent for a moment, his gaze sweeping over the faces he had captured throughout his life.

“I hope I don’t die,” he said. “And I hope this studio keeps going. That would be my greatest wish.”

Editor: Marianne Gunnarsson.

(Header image: Zhou greets guests at the studio door, shaking hands and laughing; right: The walls of Zhou’s studio are crowded with hundreds of photos from the past four decades, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, October 2025. Courtesy of Li Jincan)