Field, Forest and Family – SW China
My first visit to Yunnan province was in April 2008 whilst I was living in Vietnam. Kunming, its principal city, was just an hours flight from Hanoi. After several months in the flat Red River Delta I was longing to see hills and mountains. Rather than focusing on the enormity of the country’s cities and its fast paced growth, this project is about the people and places left behind in the mad rush for modernisation and the effects this is having on the countryside. The majority of villagers are subsistence farmers, although money now usually comes from economic migrants who have left their villages to work in China’s boomtowns.
The People’s Republic of China recognises 55 ethnic minority groups in addition to the Han majority. The ethnic minorities form 9.44% of mainland China and Taiwan’s total population and the greatest number can be found in Yunnan province, 34% (25 ethnic groups).
The mountainous terrain, poor communication and the isolation of communities have to some extent, allowed the ethnic groups to develop independently and preserve their own customs and identity.
This collection of landscape, interior and portrait photographs of the people and places of Yunnan were taken as I wandered randomly, using local transport, around the villages from the mountainous peaks in the north of the province to the tropics in the south bordering Vietnam and Laos.
In October 2010 I returned south-west China, this time to visit the Miao groups in Guizhou Province.