01Shopkeeper · Street
About
I'm a video editor, producer, photographer and journalist who lately spends a worrying amount of time building AI tools. Most of the photos were taken at night in Shenzhen. The tools were built to save time, and usually do.
01
Photography
50 frames · night · Shenzhen / LA01Shopkeeper · Street
02Rooftop, last light · Shenzhen
03Underpass sun · Portrait
04Ping An, blue · Futian
05Umbrella · Night rain
06Smoke · Portrait
07Arcs · Light installation
08Interchange, dusk · Rooftop
Click any frame to enlarge
See all 50
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02
Writing
A selection — more in the archiveAward · Shenzhen Press Group · 深圳报业集团
Excellence in Journalism (优秀新闻奖) — for breaking coverage of a massive police raid, reporting for Shenzhen Daily
Investigation
Under Fire: How Easy Is It to Get a Gun in China?
The grey zones and black markets that supply China's gun buyers — reported from the seller side.
Ran in print. Never made it online — the censors saw to that. The PDF is the whole story.
Print only
Magazine PDF ↗Censored — print only
Breaking news
Hundreds Held in Police Raids, Tested for Drugs
Breaking coverage of a massive police operation sweeping Shenzhen's entertainment district — the story behind the Excellence in Journalism Award.
Won the Excellence in Journalism Award. Quoted by international press, including The Guardian.
Shenzhen Daily
Cover story
The Hukou's Human Cost
How the household-registration system traps millions — opening with the suicide note of four left-behind children.
That's Magazines
Investigation
The Other Job Requirement: Be White
Racial discrimination in China's English teaching industry — where being a native speaker matters less than looking the part.
Shenzhen Daily
City feature
Dama Drama: Why Do People Hate China's Dancing Grandmas?
The first generation of lonely mothers in China's history — and the neighbors at war with their loudspeakers.
That's Magazines
Man on the street
The Street-Side Phone Seller
A day in the shadow economy with one of Shenzhen's informal mobile traders.
That's Magazines
Humor
Gotta Smoke? What Your Cigs Say About You
Five famous Chinese cigarette brands and what smoking them says about you.
That's Magazines
Humor
Bang for Your Buck: Cheap Dates
Romance on a budget in the world's hardware capital.
One of the most-read things I wrote. Also the most fun to write — the two are probably related.
That's Magazines
See 49 more articles→a selection across 8 sections
03
AI tools
8 built · 3 liveEight projects so far. Two run on their own — I check on them like houseplants. The rule is simple: Claude's a collaborator, not the last word.
Everything it suggests gets traced back to the source before it ships. Some of it holds up, some doesn't — knowing the difference is most of the job. None of these are demos; they all save real time.
Live · WeeklyRUNS EVERY SUNDAY
Insta360 Creator Story Finder
An autonomous weekly agent that finds undiscovered Insta360 creators before they go mainstream. Verified sources, checked against an exclusion list, published to a live page. No manual intervention.
It's live — have a look ↗Live · Proof of conceptFASTER VETTING
Sky's Pre-Post
Built for the team managing influencer partnerships: it reviews creator videos faster, checks they meet FTC disclosure rules when the creator is paid, confirms the brand logo appears, and measures the video's tone. A proof of concept — and it worked.
It's live — have a look ↗ExperimentEVERY SIDE → ONE SHEET
AI Product Photography: X4 Air
As AI image models have improved, product photography has gotten dramatically easier. I built a makeshift studio in our office, shot every side of our newest X4 Air camera, laid all the angles out on one sheet, and fed that to the model alongside commercials whose look I wanted to borrow. For a 360 camera we're not quite there yet — but we're very, very close.
Cinegear8 HRS → 1 HR
Video Selects: Claude in the Edit Bay
Claude reviewed transcripts and shot logs to pull selects from raw footage — reducing a full day of manual logging to about an hour. The edit was assembled in Premiere and screened at Cinegear.
Active · 5+ issues~8 HRS / ISSUE
Prompt Response AI速写
A bilingual AI newsletter for Insta360's Shenzhen creative studio. I build each issue after work — testing prompts, seeing what actually holds up for me, and working out how the studio could use it. It's real time: at least a full workday's worth of effort spread across a week per issue.
Live · Autonomous~HALF MY LEADS
Prompt Response Story Finder
Scans incoming newsletters, scores stories, writes bilingual EN/中文 summaries of the best ones, and pushes results to GitHub. It doesn't replace sourcing — it surfaces maybe half my leads, and I still dig out the rest myself — but it's a real head start.
It's live — have a look ↗Pipeline中文 → BILINGUAL
Shenzhen True-Crime EPUB Generator
Turns Chinese-language long-reads into bilingual Kindle EPUBs — fetched, translated with full cultural context, sources kept, assembled side-by-side. Built so a backlog of Shenzhen crime, history, and urban-village journalism is finally readable in English.
Case studyTRANSCRIPT → SCORECARD
Sales Analysis: David
David was mic'd on a shoot because I was recording him. After transcribing all the footage, Claude could turn what he did and said on the floor into a data-driven snapshot of his performance — his actual sales count came out correct. The social read still needs a human, but David recognized the analysis as accurate and committed to improving. Not far off the wearable assistant Apple is rumored to be building.