Heritage chronicler

On his RedNote homepage, Liu describes himself as a "documenter of millennium-era architectural heritage" and says his goal is to "record everyone's hometown".

His journey started in the Dongshi commercial district of downtown Jilin. This was once the busiest region surrounded by several landmark skyscrapers from the 1990s and filled with numerous small commodity and clothing wholesale markets.

The area hummed with DJ music and weekend crowds at the peak of the brick-and-mortar era. Through Liu's lens, that energy is preserved, even as newer districts replace it.

He spent most of his spare time in middle school taking photos around Jilin. After finishing the national college entrance exam, his parents bought him a camera — one he used so intensely that it broke three years later. "I must have taken 500,000, maybe even 800,000 photos," he says.