"It was the first time I focused my lens on food. We shot about 10 ingredients, including soybean milk, Sichuan pepper and preserved egg－they are all ordinary ingredients, but they surprised me with their beauty when seen from a different angle," says Zhu.

Zhu thinks the shooting of each ingredient is like a voyage of discovery－the skin of the Sichuan pepper looks like colored glass and the crystal of preserved eggs has pine needle patterns in it.

Born in 1994 in Dalian, Northeast China's Liaoning province, Zhu started to explore micro photography when she was studying for her bachelor's degree at the department of visual communication at the Academy of Arts and Design at Tsinghua University.

"At first I just took photos and used them as source material for my designs, but over time, I wanted to shoot photos with more detail and from a closer angle, so I bought my first microscope," Zhu says.

Zhu shot a collection of videos called Envisioning Chemistry in 2017, which recorded chemical reactions in startlingly vivid detail. The videos drew the attention of Chen, who decided to invited Zhu's team to shoot the micro scenes for Once Upon A Bite.