When I met Angel on my return to Beijing in 2005 she was eager to do a shoot in the hutong district that would pretty much duplicate my shoot with her half-sister Meixin the previous year - same dress and also in black and white.

I wanted to go with colour because lugging the big Pentax 6X7 had been a pain and I wanted to experiment with Fuji's faster films because of Beijing's dull ambiant light.

But the shoot was different because since 2004 the girls had lived in the district for a while, so Angel was returning to an area where people knew her. It was also an area under threat.

Although apparently scrupulously clean, to Western eyes it is a slum; the sort of workingclass community that was demolished en masse in the 60's. True, not much of historic or architectural value survives but on that basis would we demolish the Parthenon and erect a 25 storey appartment block in it's place?

The fact is most Chinese would prefer to live in one of those giant filing cabinets for people and who was I to protest? So this was a sad farewell to a precious but doomed community.

And as usual Angel's sunny personality instantly attracted and relaxed anyone we met.