New Year Of The Rooster: Celebrations in Soho on Sunday 13th February 2005 marked the beginning of the Chinese New Year on the previous Wednesday.
Here’s what I wrote back then, and a few of the pictures – with more of course still on-line on My London Diary.
The Lion prepares to pounce
Chinese New Year
Soho
Sunday 13th London was celebrating the Chinese New Year of the Rooster which started the previous Wednesday. Happy 4702 to all.
St Martins in the Fields surrounded by Chinese Lanterns
As a rooster myself I was pleased to read my horoscope for the coming year. Not that I believe such superstitions for a moment.
The Year of the Rooster – Chinese man on bicycle with rooster
I used to enjoy the rather anarchic celebrations in Cinatown, but its now more of and ordeal, with far too many people coming in to watch and too much organisation.
Ken [Livingstone] may be proud of having got something done about Trafalgar Square and be keen to have as many official events with various communities as possible, but it was better when various groups just did what they wanted to.
Meanwhile, back in Chinatown the real business continues
This year we had a procession down the Charing Cross Road with crowds penned behind barriers. Spectacle rather than event.
I did the official bit in Trafalgar Square last year – dotting the eyes on the dragons and all, [this year I] decided to give it and those horribly ingratiating speeches from local dignitaries and politicians, all keen to say “kung heI fat choy!”, a miss.
The Rooster, horoscopes and Lucky Charms
As you can see, because of the crowds making photographing from any distance difficult I took many of these pictures using a fisheye lens, and had posted them without any attempt at altering the fisheye perspective.
In later years working with fisheye lenses I would probably have used a plugin to reduce the curvature these lenses produce. Unfortunately Imadio who sold the ‘Fisheye-Hemi’ plugin I then used went out of business, and the plugin no longer works, as it was written to check back to their web site every time it was used that I was a registered user. I feel rather cheated having paid for it and no longer being able to use it.
It’s possible to get the same – or similar – results in Photoshop without the plugin, but rather a pain to do so. Photoshop does offer an Adaptive Wide Angle filter, but this seems to produce excessive cropping of the image. Here’s my rough correction of the image above in which the image curvature is less pronounced. But it would be nice to have a plugin or Photoshop action which would do the job properly.
Shops, Warner, Marx, English & A Lighthouse from my walk on Sunday 24th September 1989.
Shop Window, High St, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9c-36
I wasn’t quite sure what I thought about this window display with at right a dress with pictures with rear views of three mice as PRODUCER, DIRECTOR and EDITOR sitting in their directors chairs holding megaphone, script and clapper-board for TAKE 1.
To the left is a mannequin in some kind of underwear and holding another item of lingerie, with other items draped over what looks like a deckchair without its canvase. Behind the two is the larger face of a woman photographed in similar underwear.
I’m not sure how I would describe the faces and hair styles of the two mannequins; perhaps “imperious”?
La Three Shoes, High St, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9c-23
I’m unsure if ‘finial’ is the correct architectural term for these decorative features at the division between the shop fronts on the substantial block on the north side of the High Street between Pretoria Avenue and Carisbrooke Rd, I think at 19-35.
This block was developed by The Warner Estate Co. Ltd, registered in 1891 and responsible for much of the development of the area between the 1880s and the First World War, and it probably dates from the early 1890s.
Quite what the significance of the dragon, the flower and the grotesque devilish face are I leave to you. But I took four photographs of this, and another between 27 and 29 in the row.
Clock, Apollo, 4, St James St, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9c-25
I tuned south down St James’s Street where on the right are two more blocks of Warner properties with more of the dragons and flowers but without the grinning gargoyles between the shops. Between the first and second floor buildings are mouldings with winged cherubs holding an ornate a bowl of fruit, surrounded by swirls of oak leaves. There is a flower at each bottom corner and in the centre, below the bowl what could be a mushroom or toadstool.
Shops, 2-10, St James St, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9c-11
Apollo Dry Cleaners are still I think in the shop at 4 St James St and you can see them in this picture of the row of shops. The clock which was above the Opticians at Number 6 has now gone, although I think two strips of wood which held it are still in place.
These shops – and those on the High Street in the top picture are not even locally listed but they are in the Walthamstow St James Conservation area, with these Warner properties on St James St marked for possible future local listing. There are also desciptions of these and the High Street properties.
Alfred English, Funeral Directors, St James St, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9c-14
Funeral Directors Alfred English are still at 70 St James St, but the extension at he side of their large detached house is no longer a shop window and the large sign on the wall to its left and reflected in the window has also gone.
Alfred English have been funeral directors in Walthamstow since 1896, for many years as a family owned firm. It has become a part of Dignity Group which includes 795 Funeral Directors across the UK.
I was rather disappointed to find that Marx House had no connection with Karl, but was named after Marx Gross its first occupier. But while that may be so, I think it may also have a connection with the street name, Markhouse Rd, which apparently derives from an early Marck Manor House. Mearc apparently meant boundary and the estate was on both sides of the boundary between Leyton and Walthamstow.
This was on Markhouse Common which was enclosed in the 1850s and development of this area then started with railways serving the area around. Until 2002 there was a pub at the junction of Markhouse Lane and Queen’s Road, which over the years had various names including the Commongate Hotel, JD’s, Couples and the Sportsman, but is now a hotel with its old name.
This local landmark was built in 1893 and was for many years a popular church in the area. Bullard King & Company, Limited had been founded in 1850 by Daniel King and Samuel Bullard with a fleet of sailing ships trading between London and Natal as The White Cross Line, and they moved to steam vessels in 1879, adding services to carry labourers from India to South Africa.
In 1889 Captain King donated the site on Markhouse Road and paid for the building, begun in 1892, making clear what he wanted to architect J. Williams Dunford. Apparently originally the church had a revolving light shining during services.
The light perhaps helped to attract worshippers and in 1903 it had congregations of over 1,500. The building was Grade II listed in 2007, and the listing text contains an unusually lengthy description including the following: “The lighthouse turret is distinctive, particularly given the church’s inland location, and is an uncommon feature of the design. Despite the obvious link between Christian imagery of Jesus as the Light of the World and the function of a lighthouse, there are no known examples of church designs which use a lighthouse architectural feature. “
The building is still in use as The Lighthouse Methodist Church though I imagine congregations are now considerably smaller.
Back in 2008 I photographed the London celebrations in Chinatown for the Year of the Rat, which took place on February 10th, 2008, and wrote this short text:
Chinese New Year Celebrations, Soho
Soho, Westminster, London. Sunday, 10 Feb, 2008
The Chinese New Year celebrations in London have rather got out of hand, with more and more people flooding in to Chinatown, and an incredible amount of sponshorship for the event. There is strong evidence in the programme, now 120 thick pages mainly of advertising, along with some of the most tedious photographs you will ever see. The genuinely useful content in it could have been handed out on a much more user-friendly 2 sides of A4.
But if you can avoid the worst of the crowds, it’s still a fun event and at times spectacular. But there are 51 other weekends of the year when its probably more interesting to come and see Chinatown how it really is.
This year the celebrations are almost certain to be considerably more muted and mainly on-line. The Chinese New Year is actually in two days time on 12 Feb and in more normal times would have been celebrated next Sunday rather like in 2008 with crowds in Soho and a procession, with events in Trafalgar Square and Leiscester Square. But for the Year of the Ox I think you will have to make do with a virtual celebration – and perhaps a Chinese takeaway.
It’s a while since I’ve actually gone to the celebrations in Soho. Said to be the largest celebrations of the New Year outside Asia, the event has become far too crowded for me, and frustrating to try to photograph. Back in 2008 I went early, before the crowds built up, but later it became very hard to get the pictures I wanted.
Using a fisheye lens did enable me to find a little space where there was really none; some of these pictures I ‘de-fished’ to give straight verticals but others I left with the obvious curvature. But more of the pictures were taken with the 12-24mm Sigma lens, giving a very wide rectilinear view even on the DX Nikon D200 I was then using.
Some of the other images – including three here – were taken on a Leica M8, mainly with a 35mm Summilux F1.4 lens. Although this was fine when taking pictures, it was an older lens and required considerable fiddling with software to get usable results, as not only did the sensor vignette badly, but the vignetting came with colour casts.
The M8 was a good black and white camera, but something of a disaster with colour. Leica and most early reviewers had failed to notice that because the M8 sensor had no IR filter it recorded much black clothing as strongly magenta, and there were other incorrect colours. The company eventually supplied those who had bought the camera with two IR cut filters, but that limited my choice of lenses to two – and one of my favourite lenses could not take a filter.
Given those limitations, the M8 was fine to use, with a simple interface that enabled you to take still pictures without the huge thick manuals that most digital cameras need. But I soon get fed up with all the hassle of processing the images, and got rid of it. It was an expensive experience that soured my whole view of Leica, and why I now use Fuji cameras rather than Leica.
We can also wish ourselves Happy New Year “Xin Nian Kuai Le” or “San Nin Faai Lok” and hope for ‘Happiness and prosperity!’ doing our best to pronounce 恭喜发财 / 恭喜發財, something like ‘gong-hey faa-choy‘
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
