Frank Fradella is an old friend from my days in Shanghai and those of you who read his always-entertaining blog will know about his recent trip to Beijing. It's been good to see him again, and the friendship angle probably also explains how we managed to get such a great photographer to come out and help us with a weekend photo shoot.

And it was a fantastic shoot. If you were anywhere in the vicinity of Houhai last Saturday afternoon, in fact, I'd be surprised if you didn't hear the commotion. As Frank describes it:

The paparazzi caught us at the bridge and at one point there were so many photographers snapping away that they had created a wall between myself and my cast. They literally had them surrounded!

Things got crazy. One minute I was peering over the bridge looking at the boats crash into each other as they jostled through the bridge and the next I was being pressed into the side of the bridge by the crowd and couldn't see anyone on our team when I turned around. They were literally surrounded by a pack of photographers causing a major traffic jam. And something amazing happened: our team just rolled with it - they were absolute naturals in front of the camera. Welcome to Popup Chinese, world. You'll be hearing a lot more about us.

Frank captured some great shots of Apple in particular, but my personal favorite is this one of the team. The photo doesn't include everyone (Kang, Brendan, 9527, Echo, myself and Wendy are M.I.A.), but it was about as large a group shot as we got.

The day ended with us back in our hutong exhausted, but having had such a good time that no-one wanted to leave. If you've got a couple of minutes and want to see the Popup team in action click through to Frank's blog and check out the photos. I think you'll be glad to have some pictures to put with the voices we keep putting on the air.