The patches on the boy’s clothing are not an affectation. Everything is patched rather than discarded, including pots, pans and even porcelain. Being a rare foreigner, the two girls respond to me with curiosity.

This is the main highway in Yunnan from Dali to Shaping and points north, and it is also a highway where old China collides with the new, resulting in a a high number of tragic accidents in mixed traffic. Note the leather collar ringed with bells on the little Yunnanese pony.

We look at this photo and see rain, but a local would focus on the power line, for electricity arriving at rural hamlets like this meant television and at least one telephone to connect with the outside world.

We stopped on a remote and rocky road in the hills of Sichuan and came upon this easy-going fellow playing by the side of the road just for his own amusement.

However much and however rapidly Cina modernizes, in the remoter areas of the country such as here, in Southern Yunnan Proviince, the traditional patterns of farm life remain essentially unchanged. The question is how long will it remain unaffected. This was taken in Xishuangbanna, a minority area in southwest China near the Burmese border. House here more closely resemble those throughout SE Asia than they do traditional Chinese architecture.

Deep in China’s southwest, near the border with Burma, the pattern of life had not changed much in 1979 except for the advent of rural busses and electricity. Note the Southeast Asian style architecture and the carefully terraced hills.

Coming around a bend on a country road one never knew what to expect: yak in the north, buffalo anywhere, sheep, cattle, overturned truck, a flock of school kids. More than once I saw drivers doing motor or transmission overhauls right on the road.

I was always a subject of curiosity in the countryside and I really cracked people up making jokes in Chinese. We have three different reactions here: two are amused, one puzzled and one turns away.

What book does this remind you of?

This prosperous farmhouse is made of bricks with a tile roof. The style of beautiful woven basket on the cart is hundreds of years old. The packed earth courtyard is used for threshing and chili peppers are hung to dry. In old China there would be four or five generations living within these walls. While the middle aged and young worked the fields the elderly would care for and bond with the infants

Hospitality is deeply ingrained in Chinese culture so that works well for a foreign photographer who speaks Chinese. But in this case, I snapped the picture with the camera still hanging from my neck at the same time I was speaking a friendly greeting. The expression on each person registers a slightly different response, but all were very friendly. That’s a hand-held scale the woman is holding.

This is a typical ferry landing operation throughout China. The ferry is on the far side of the river and parallel to the landing. I crossed on many of these ferries including a trip across the Yellow River that carried my jeep on a platform of inflated animal skins. The massive infrastructure investments that were to come brought bridges and paved highways to places like this.

Women much prefer to do factory work rather than the drudgery of farming. I did notice in most of the factories I visited that workers did not wear facemasks or ear protection nor did management enforce their use. There was no interest in my explanation how bad effects can take years to develop and become ruinous to the health in later years.

This Tibetan woman is riding a yak in Sichuan Province. A large portion of Sichuan Province was carved from the territory of Tibet and remains largely populated by Tibetans when I was there in the 1980’s. The Yak is a vital element in Tibetan life. It produces meat, milk and transportation. Overgrazing is a conspicuous problem in the highland pastures because of poor conservation management by the government.

Sidewalks in China are used for sales and manufacturing. This family of three generations is making leather horse and mule collars and bridles in western China

For the first thirty years of the PRC, infrastructure investment did not extend to the deep countryside. Bridges were often in dangerous disrepair until after 1979.

This man lost his leg in a farming accident. Safety in farms and factories were not an issue. Everywhere that I visited in China, unprotected saws, giant pulleys without covers and tractors with dangerous exposed moving parts were common. In a country claiming the benefits of socialism, I was surprised to see many people begging and needing medical care.

China has over 50 national minorities with their own language, culture and apparel. Usually, only the women wear their native costume while the men tend to wear work clothes. Yunnan Province in the Southwest China is populated with many minorities.

These Qing Dynasty fishing boats date back to the 1800’s. They are still in use on Lake Erhai in Yunnan Province. It is common for many families live on these ancient vessels.

This is a recycle collection yard. The broken slab in the foreground says “Mao Zedong Thought,” the all-encompassing ideology of the PRC that became an extreme orthodoxy during the terrible years of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). This broken slogan would have brought a death penalty in that era to the persons responsible.

Cured tobacco leaves for sale on a village sidewalk. Once farmers were liberated to sell their surplus products after satisfying state quotas, people sold them in the nearest town. Often, people said triumphantly, that they did not have to pay taxes unaware that compulsory selling of their produce to the government at fixed rates was a form of tax.

Li Jiang, in Yunnan Province, is where the Naxi minority people live. Those living in the nearby mountains carry enormous loads long distances to do their marketing here at the town center. A typical shopping journey from a remote mountain village may be a 2-4 day journey.

A Tibetan family moves their yak herds from one pasture to another as the season changes. They do not consider themselves nomads because they are at home wherever they are.

Anthropologists regard the Tibetans as nomads but the Tibetans don’t see themselves that way for they are at home wherever they are. They move with the seasons to grazing pastures for their yak herds. Overgrazing was a serious problem that was ignored by the government during my trips to the highlands in the 1980s.

A Tibetan woman and her horse in Sichuan Province. This area of Tibet was carved off by the PRC government and attached to that province. Han are the main ethnic group in China and comprise about 90% of the population.

These two-piece raincoats are being sold on a dirt lot in Shaping. When free markets, as they were called then, were permissible, people formed their own markets on vacant lots, on sidewalks, in village squares or anyplace where there was open space.

Rural villages are linked in a marketing network such that market day rotates from one town to another on different days of the month. Here, people are streaming in to the village of Shaping in Yunnan Province to buy or to sell. The market is held on any large open dirt space on the edge of town.

Aba in Sichuan Province was part of Tibet until it was appropriated by the PRC after 1949. This is highland pastureland populated by Tibetans who shepherd large herds of yak. Yaks are protein sources and pack animals. They transport all the possessions of the nomadic families as they shift with the seasons from one pasture to another. The area suffers from overgrazing. The men, women and children are all marvelous equestrians.

Buses and trucks shared the streets with family carts. There were very few automobiles then and people were unfamiliar with vehicles on the roads and streets. This resulted in accidents that took many lives. In my annual visits to China I never failed to see numerous fatal accidents, many involving children and whole families.

Women not only work in the home and in the fields, but they do much of the marketing as well. They carry heavy loads over considerable distances to get to the market town. The headgear tells us these are minority women in Yunnan Province.

This is Shaping in Yunnan Province, an area where many people of the Bai minority dwell. People are streaming to the village market that is just an open space on the edge of town. Several villages and towns in a district are linked in a marketing network so that on alternating days of the month, a different village will host the market. Market days in a village are always very festive.

Diesel electric locomotives were imported from Romania. During this era, passenger trains never exceeded 36 miles per hour. Passenger stations doubled as freight transfer depots. One could see a variety of local produce and manufactured products piled in them, including live poultry. Note the flatbed wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow was a very early invention in China. Some featured sails and carried passengers seated, one on either side of a centered wheel. The centered wheel carried most of the weight, unlike the wheelbarrow invented in the West.

In the 1980’s and 90’s, I never saw toys of any kind in any of the villages I visited. I gave this this child some bubble fluid and it attracted a crowd that responded with expressions of puzzlement and glee.   Traditionally, China did not manufacture toys.  They were either homemade or fashioned one at a time by local craftsmen as a part-time occupation in the off-season. Toys tended to be interactive, such as tops you needed to spin or a kind of horizontal yo-yo both of which required technique that needed to be learned. Organized sports such as baseball or soccer teams did not exist. The closest thing to organized sports was the annual boat race competitions during the Dragon Boat Festival. All that has now changed with the expansion of free enterprise and the introduction of professional teams.

During the Mao era, cameras were considered bourgeois. However, these girls have no problems with that as opposed to the adults in the rear. After 1979, the government became more relaxed about cameras.

This is a typical country village railroad crossing where the safety bar is hand operated. Trucks were used as buses and personal autos rare. Pony carts, bicycles and walking were the main modes of transportation. Trash seen on the left was common in public spaces.

This house, built of mud, bricks and stones has weathered drought, rebellion, invasion and revolution: not to mention surviving an impoverished nation.

This remote mountaintop outpost is literally the end of the road. It has a several shops to serve the scattered farms that scratch out a living in the few places where there is arable land. China, about the same landmass as the United States, has only a small fraction of arable land that the U.S. has. This little outpost hamlet is the starting point for a mule journey up the mountains out of sight to the right. At the top of a mountain is small Daoist monastery just big enough for two or three monks perched on a cliffside overlook. Such sites, chosen by the monks for their remoteness, were not spared the onslaught of the communist political movements that swept over the country from 1959 to 1979. At the time of my visit, one monk led a lonely existence trying to rehabilitate the monastery. The persistence of ancient Daoism after all that China has endured is truly remarkable.

Small children too young to work the fields were put to the task of minding immense animals ten times larger than they.

These little Yunnanese ponies wear a leather ring of bells around their neck that jingle with each step. You hear caravans of them every morning as they head into Kunming with produce from the surrounding countryside. Ponies have always played an important role in Chinese culture and have existed before the earliest dynasties.

The mighty Yangtze River originates at a Tibetan glacier then flows through Yunnan Province through deep ravines where it is called the Golden Sands River. Some mountains here were not summited until the 1980’s.

The closest thing to organized sports in ancient China was the annual Dragon Boat Festival that often saw teams from different villages competing against each other. In agricultural societies festivals tend to occur at regular intervals throughout the year. In fact, the word for festival in China is the same word for the regularly spaced knots on bamboo.  The festival is believed to have originated in the death by drowning of a loyal official, Qu Yuan, who was banished for his honest criticism of his ruler in the third century BCE. Local people, it is said, raced out on the water in boats to save him, and when they realized he had drowned, they took meat in rice balls, wrapped them in bamboo leaves and dropped them in the river to lure fish away from the revered man’s body. Always ready to turn any occasion into an opportunity for dining, this is said to be the origin of the famous Zongzi dish, which are prepared exactly like what was put into the river so many centuries ago.

ChinaÕs famous Huangshan national park is a thirty-minute flight from Shanghai. In 1979, you had no choice but to climb the stairs to reach the pinnacles. Later, a cable car was installed. Visitors were few because of the standard six-day workweek in place. Twenty years later the government experimented with a five-day workweek every other week. That gave immediate rise to a booming tourist industry. Within a year, a five-day workweek became standard. The cable car, rising wages and a full weekend raised park visitor numbers exponentially.

From this western oasis on the edge of Dunhuangthe, the Silk Road split into the northern and the southern routes to skirt the dreaded Taklamakan Desert to the west. Arriving caravan people gave thanks for their safe passage or prayed for the same if outbound, hence the oasis became an established religious center. Caves here feature magnificent 7th century art preserved by the desert’s dry atmosphere.

In China’s countryside, you buy liquid goods such as soy sauce by taking your own empty bottle to the store to be filled from a bulk vat. This cheerful young girl is happy to see me. I asked her and others why and she replied, “It means we’re in a new time now if foreigners are coming to our country. It will be a better time.” The building in the background indicates she is part of a commune work brigade. Such collectives were formed in the mid-1950s. In 1979, individual leased plots were introduced and much favored by the farmers over the collectives.

China began to ripple with all kinds of new construction after the death of Mao. It was as if the country was waking up from a nightmare. Much of the work was done by muscle power. Modernization of equipment was yet to come.

China’s unrelenting demand for food makes any arable land valuable for agriculture. For thousands of years, throughout the mountainous regions, hundreds of valleys have been laboriously worked over to make them suitable for planting. These small-plot farms are typical of the Chinese countryside and have survived dynasties, wars, oppression including the hated and now-abandoned commune system instituted by Mao to convert the country to a more pure form of communism.

It’s summer but everyone is bundled up in this village in northern Heilongjiang Province. It is near the Amur River that marks the border with Russia. This is where the Manchu minority dwelled before they conquered China and established the Qing Dynasty that lasted from 1644 to 1911 when the Republican revolution de-throned them. Under the PRC, this region was where people were originally exiled to and later became a new frontier for populating and development. Here, the winters are harsh, the soil fertile and the forests magnificent.

The centrally planned economy under Maoist rule over produced tractors and under produced trucks. The local solution was to convert a tractor to a truck using a welder’s torch. The exposed pulleys on the tractor have caused countless accidents in China. A lifetime of unrelenting hard work, childbirth and a lack of calcium very likely are the cause of this elderly woman’s stoop.

The sign on this modest Hainan Island building says “Exhibition of artifacts showing the life history of the Miao People.’ The Miao are one of China’s larger minorities. They are located in many parts of China’s southern provinces.

As a rule, in the countryside people live in hamlets, villages or small towns. But once in awhile I would come across a family living as outliers hidden away from society. There was no one around to ask about the purpose of the Y shaped tree stump.

This is the main Yunnan highway from Dali to Shaping. It is also a highway where the old China collides with the new resulting in many tragic accidents due to mixed traffic. Ponies have been used in China for over 2000 years. It is only natural for them to run the center of the road.

A West Lake scene that has been viewed by the various dynasties over the past three thousand years.

Water buffalo are wonderfully patient, obedient and hard working. These animals are well suited to the small plot farms of China’s south. Today, this Guilin landscape attracts many tourists who marvel at the karst limestone formations.

New bridges with beautiful arches have replaced country ferries such as this on the Li River near Guilin. The lush bamboo grove on the left is one of 40 different specie of bamboo in China.

This is a typical country ferry scene on the Li River in Guilin. The area was peacefully quiet and undisturbed in 1979. Modern bridges have now displaced many of these centuries old man-powered ferry systems. Today, the karst formations are a popular tourist attraction.

This is the main highway between Sichauan’s and Sngpan in Gansu Province. In 1980, this route was not for the faint-hearted. This one lane road had two-way traffic and no guardrails. Emergency help was hours away. These beautiful high-grasslands once belonged to Tibet.

LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM blares this overpowering slogan on the building but it is unlikely anyone in this remote mountain town has much grasp of the texts. Some didn’t know who they were. Maoism and Marxism didnÕt leave an indelible mark on all of the Chinese population, which tells us something about the persistence of culture. It also is a statement of how difficult it will be to inscribe democratic values in a culture steeped in hierarchy and deference to authority.

The caravans on the old Silk Road traversed these mountains that separate Central Asia from Europe. It is just north of Kashgar, the ancient trading oasis where China-bound travelers exchanged horses for camels and Europe-bound, the opposite. The old bazaar that was still there in 1979 has been razed and modernized. The camels are gone and the animal trading has been booted out of town.

In the 5th century BCE, North China was firmly Buddhist. Datong was famous as far south as Ceylon. Over the years, European and American archaeologist looted grottoes here and in Longmen but much remains. Weather and air pollution are serious concerns since the sculptures long ago lost their protective wooden structures to fires. Today, with fast trains and a modern highway, Yungang, near Datong, Shanxi Province, is now just hours west of Beijing.

The three most important things for a Chinese chef are freshness, freshness and freshness. That is why poultry sold in the farmers’ markets all over China are sold live. The sign in the background says, “No selling of any object that the nation clearly forbids.” Since Lijiang is a remote village in China’s southwestern Province of Yunnan, the concern is likely over selling endangered species for Chinese medicine.

The man and the woman at the storefront are wearing garments made of sheepskin. They are of the Naxi minority in the mountain town of Lijiang in the Yunnan area. Yunnan is known for its Naxi minority population.

This scene is typical of thousands of old villages in the remote countryside throughout China. Electricity has been introduced allowing for radio and government controlled news. The narrowness of the streets and the construction of the buildings make it near impossible to economically modernize these villages. The streets are too narrow for heavy construction equipment to excavate and lay sewage pipes or widen to allow for modern traffic. Consequently, many such towns cannot be modernized. Economic activity has bypassed them in favor of whole new towns. Some of these old towns have been preserved from demolition and have become lively tourist attractions for people with a nostalgic interest in seeing a slice of old China.

The central market in Lijiang, Yunnan Province as it appeared before development as a tourist center. Note the small stools put out for customers. Great weights could be carried by a single slice of a bamboo pole which, pound-for-pound, is stronger than steel. For the people living in the surrounding remote mountain villages and hamlets, it is a 2-3 day shopping trip.

This lady is sitting beside the main footpath in the village of Lijiang in Yunnan Province. She is waiting for customers. When I asked for a certain thing she had ran out of, she said, “Wait here. I’ll run home for more.” She hadn’t the slightest qualms about leaving her merchandise untended with a stranger. This trusting behavior was common in the countryside.

This cart of firewood will be made into charcoal for cooking. Her husband is in front pulling while she pushes with her child trailing behind. In the background on the right is a sidewalk vendor, a typical low overhead way of doing business.

Kashgar is an ancient trading post on the old Silk Road. Its the last oasis before leaving China heading west to Central Asia and Europe. These men, father and son, are copper craftsmen, a popular product the region is known for. The city dates back to over 2000 years and the area fertile with vegetables, fruits and livestock. The majority of the population here are Muslims.

With the exception of the one man eyeing the photographer, these people are enthralled by a street performer in the the Kashgar town square stuffing a small snake up his nostril and out his mouth. Kashgar is on the west side of the Taklamakan Desert and famous for its bazaar and camel market. Merchants on the ancient Silk Road used horses to cross the mountains from the Middle East and then swapped them here in the bazaar for camels more suited to desert travel.

This crowded market in Lijiang, Yunnan Province, is typical of markets throughout China—women shopping for fresh vegetables with youngsters in tow. People in this area wear a back padding as part of their clothing whether carrying a backpack or not. It’s part of everyday wear. The back padding protects their back and their clothing from the rough wooden backpacks used for carrying goods to market and firewood from the forest. The steep mountains in the areas make wheeled vehicles impractical for villagers.

This gathering is at a minority trading post located between Shaping and Dali in Yunnan Province. My wife, Loretta Gibbs, has attracted their attention, as foreigners were very rare at this time in this region. The colorful design of the womenÕs clothing has not changed over the millennia.

The cap indicates she is a member of the Sanyi ethnic group, one of China’s 55 or so national minorities. The tabs pointing up signify her unmarried status; when she marries, they will be folded down over the top of her head.

In 1979 the quality of fruit was very poor. By the 1990’s the improvement was remarkable. My university (UC) and other schools opened its labs and made its seeds available to visiting scholars from China proving the benefits of ending its isolation.

When farmers were permitted to sell their surplus produce on the open market, anyplace would do to set up shop. One might see a farmer with a chicken in each hand, standing alone: the flapping fowl his only advertising. Here, a farmer spreads his potatoes in the middle of the sidewalk to compete with bags and baskets of other produce.

After 1979, three years after MaoÕs death, Deng Xiaoping allowed farmers to sell their surplus produce on the open market. These women are selling bitter melon called kugua and cucumbers. A wooden hand scale is leaning against the woman’s leg. They are giggling because I told them I admired their improvised stools.

A young woman captured in a pensive moment guarding her family’s pony cart at the village market. The pony cart is a combination of old and new. The wheels are spoked and feature modern rubber tires but the woodwork joinery of the wagon is reflective of old world skills handed down for centuries.

Mini-restaurants opened at the same time farmers were allowed to sell their produce on sidewalks. This continues in most places today, as the food is convenient and cheap. Her sheepskin rain cape tells us this was taken in Yunnan.

These are members of the Sanyi group in Yunnan Province. The baby carriers are handmade, embroidered and colorful. The minority people tend to make lavish use of color, while the Han tend towards the drab. The Han constitute over 90% of China’s population. A minority woman said, “Only when something is not beautiful do the Han say it’s beautiful.

This lady is hobbling on tiny bound feet in the courtyard of what was once the home of a prosperous landowner. The revolution following WWII expropriated the property. The compound became the site of a commune or labor brigade when China collectivized in the early 1950’s. A tattered bulletin board to the woman’s right usually posted government propaganda. The binding of feet was outlawed in the early years of the Republican government under Chiang Kai-shek.

These bicycles can carry heavy loads. This is a cargo of Chinese peppers similar to our bell peppers heading to market.

Not heading for the beach. He’s delivering a truck tube. Within ten years one began to see the most extraordinary loads on bicycles, such as wide sofas, tables and dressers. In 1979 it was commonplace to see a mixed traffic of bicycles, horse carts, massive trucks and the occasional car that was either a taxi or a government officialÕs car.

Mao famously said “Women hold up half the sky,” a slogan intended to elevate the status of women and also to justify including them in the labor force. This woman has heard MaoÕs call. The downside for women was that while they were expected to work on a par with men, they were still saddled with childbearing responsibilities and housework. Worse, women were criticized if they stayed home and criticized for not staying home if they worked full-time.

This bamboo raft is carrying cargo down the Xiang River in Hunan Province. A scientific study in England proved that oar sweeps like these are much more energy efficient than rowing oars. It was China’s use of bamboo rafts that led China to become the inventor of watertight compartments for ocean going vessels. Every ship that sails the oceans today is based on 2nd century CE Chinese maritime architecture that was brought to Europe by Sir Samuel Bentham in the late 1700’s. Marco Polo described them 1295 but no one paid attention.

These Sanyi women, at a trading post in Yunnan Province, collect materials for embroidering to take home to work on. They then bring their finished work back to the trading post to exchange for cash. A trading post also serves as a socializing center.

This is a tie-dye station where women bring their prepared fabrics to undergo the process and then be hung up to dry on huge, tall racks. Yunnan is famous for its blue and white tie-die fabric.

By standards of the time, this is a very nice farmer’s one-room home. He has a pigsty just outside the kitchen door; the roof is weather tight, a concrete slab counter and stove. The village well is nearby as is the public toilet. There is a road into town with bus service. I’ve been in farmer’s homes far less roomy than this. (Only half the room appears in the photo.) Like other similar homes there is just a single low wattage light bulb.

Boys and girls generally did not play together. These are all boys. In the rivers, only the boys swam. Both were friendly, inquisitive and had no problems with having their picture taken. The summer is hot in China’s continental climate and there was no air conditioning in 1979. Kids stripped down to the bare minimum to keep cool. Of course where there was any swimmable place the kids swam but I never came across a public swimming pool anywhere in those days. In 1979, lots of people moved bamboo beds out on to the sidewalk at night and slept there because their dwellings were just too darned hot.

West Lake in Hangzhou is China’s favorite city. The lakeshore was made off-limits to the public and taken over by important officials for their villas. Before that, the villas were owned by the wealthy and also off-limits. Now most of the lakeshore is accessible to the public. A 1950’s era underground command center for the central government is a tourist attraction here including the bed General Lin Biao slept on.

The Sacred Way leading to the Ming Tombs outside Beijing was found deserted except for the caretakers. That changed after China opened up to tourists in the following years. Now iron railings guard everything and roads are wider to accommodate scores of tour buses.

The womanÕs head covering in this 1979 photo indicates that this is in Suzhou in western China. Recent changes that had just taken place in government policies at this time allowing for limited free enterprise resulted in street vendors selling a huge variety of products including live animals. Live fish, chickens and ducks were found almost everywhere, as the Chinese are fanatics about their food being fresh. Even in later years when refrigerators became commonplace, food shopping remained a daily enterprise to ensure freshness.

Pigs are particularly valued in China since before the beginning of the earliest dynasties. They are self-sufficient and allowed to be turned loose to forage on their own. One needs to be prepared to encounter these animal anywhere such as this cyclist steering well clear of this particularly large pig. Contrary to expectations, I found pigs in China, on the streets and farms, to be surprisingly clean.

In 1980, China introduced the one child policy aimed at the Han majority population in fear of food shortages. Couples who abided by this policy were awarded a “Certificate of Honor for Single Child Parents.” A violation of the one-child policy resulted in punishments that could last a lifetime. As most jobs and housing were government related, housing for the family would be denied and job promotions ruled out. In some areas, relatives were held as hostages until the woman consented to sterilization. When the private sector of the economy grew, parents who violated the one child policy would be heavily fined and charged exorbitant school fees for their child. Such controls had less effect on farmers because they built their own houses and did not have state jobs. Job promotion or denial was not an issue. In addition, farmers often didn’t want their children, especially a girl, to attend school anyway. The punishments for farmers were different. Their houses might be bulldozed or televisions and furniture confiscated depending on the local authorities. In the mid 1980s, the laws were relaxed a little allowing for families in rural areas to have a second child. The one child policy ended in 2015.

On Erhai Lake in Yunnan Province, families depend on boats for both home and livelihood. These boats are well over 100 years old dating back to the Qing Dynasty.

There are two things that identify a person’s locality in China. One is dialect and the other is headwear. This woman is of Suzhou. The bamboo carrying pole she has is split in half to give it flexibility. Pound for pound, bamboo is stronger than steel. It is considered to be a symbol of good fortune because of its quick growth and a symbol of longevity because of its long life span. One of the most important uses of bamboo in history is its part in the invention of paper. Most ancient Chinese instruments were made from bamboo including the flute. Other products made from this plant are boats and rafts, homes, chopping boards, chopsticks, cooking utensils, fishing rods and medicine.

The Maple Bridge of Suzhou was made famous during the Tang Dynasty when poet Zhang Ji (766-830 CE) wrote about it after his boat anchored there for the night. Travel in old China was mainly by boat, especially in the south, which is crisscrossed by miles of waterways.

I rode all over China on passenger trains pulled by steam locomotives like this one. I enjoyed cracking jokes with the crew when we stopped for coal and water. Note the spiffy whitewalls. The rims were painted bright red. A plaque with Mao’s portrait was on the front of the boiler on some engines, a big red star on others. The engineer said their fastest permitted speed was 36 mpg. Most Chinese steam engines were manufactured in Datong, Shanzi, China up to 1988 when they switched to diesel engines for their main railroad lines. China continued using steam engines for their industrial lines and also for the Jitong Railway in Mongolia where coal was cheap and plentiful. China officially ended their use of steam engines on their national rail network in 2002 but a few units remained in use on minor lines. The Jitong Railway had diesel engines by 2005 but some steam engines remained in use on industrial lines until 2010. Today, ChinaÕs trains are more modern, efficient and faster than anything we have in America.

Immense tree-planting campaigns have not successfully prevented desertification in China’s west. Desertification has destroyed entire villages and swallows up over 1,000 miles annually. The expansion of the Gobi desert is one of the fastest on earth and causing major problems for China.

This musician is performing on the street in the Shaanxi hamlet of Yangjiagou in northwest China. In areas of China where modernization has passed by, one can still find villages where itinerant musicians and storytellers, often blind, perform for donations.

Musicians perform in the Shaanxi hamlet of Yangjiagou in northwest China. In areas of China where modernization has passed by, one can still find villages where itinerant musicians and storytellers, often blind, perform for donations.

Converting hills into Yanglia Gou farmlands requires carrying water uphill by hand in this arid region of northwest China. Desperate for farmland, the Chinese here have been able to make this area productive.

I came across this humble structure on a remote road deep in the countryside and was struck by the outsized characters on the sign that declares GENERAL STORE. I wondered how such a tiny shack could be anything close to a general store with no local population to support it. I really admired the ambition of the proprietor. Crates of soft drinks are visible on the left, giving a clue to what the store stocks. Inside, the meager inventory included cigarettes, matches, toilet paper, cheap candy and soap. The utility pole to the left shows that electrification has successfully reached such a location. That is one of the great accomplishments of the PRC and is owing to the long period of peace that has followed after the Korean War (1950-53) and the border skirmish with Vietnam in 1979.

In a mountain hamlet as remote as you could imagine, I found this remarkably nice school. The daughter of a villager, who had left, accumulated wealth in Hong Kong. She brought back a sum equal to $30,000.00 to the village to build the school. Unfortunately, due to government neglect, the school is in danger from erosion in the surrounding areas. When Mao was on the run, this village harbored him. But once he left, he never gave anything to the village. Except for the school, whatever infrastructure I saw, such as a bridge or stones lining the creek, had been built by the Qing Dynasty over 100 years ago and not by the PRC.

In areas of China that modernization has passed by, one can still find villages where itinerant musicians and storytellers perform for donations. This blind musician is entertaining in the Shaanxi hamlet of Yangjiagou.

Small villages would build a theater so that travelling troupes could come and stay for a few days or a week to perform village operas. Here, musicians are preparing the audience for a blind performer who would chant a ribald story that drove the village women away out of modesty.

In this northwest village of Yanglia Gou, people lived in caves. Children went to school in a cave that was dark because the lone light bulb was not turned on to save on the electric bill. My university students contributed their own money to the village chief to pay the electric bill for a year. Later in the day I saw the chief gambling with wads of bills.

These school children in Yanglia Gou have been allowed to come out of their cave classroom for the special treat of seeing foreigners, namely the several university students who accompanied me to this village. Like the villagers, we slept in caves rented from villagers. The caves on the upper right are abandoned. Caves last only about a decade or so. However, they are cool in the summer and warm in the winter. The bed is a stone platform across the rear of the cave and the entire family sleeps on that platform. There is a fireplace under it and a flume to carry away smoke. 

A tugboat shepherds six barges with quarried stone to urban building sites downstream on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. It 1979, everyone in China was organized like an army and assigned to units. In China, as in any army, everything is organized around a unit and nothing exists outside a unit. From 1949 to 1979, everyone and every activity were organized into a Danwei, or unit. No matter what you sought to do, whether to buy socks in a store or buy train tickets, the first question you were asked is, “What’s your unit?” A unit upstream would be assigned by the government with the task of breaking up stones in a rock quarry and loading them on to barges. The barges would belong to another unit that would have many barges in its command. The unit would be tasked with the responsibility of hauling cargo. The rock unit would pay the barge unit, just like a business would in a capitalist economy. The buyer of the stones would be the construction unit in the city and they would pay the rock unit.   But unlike private companies in a Capitalist country, a China unit does not have to make a profit because the government runs things. You can see what this leads to. So if a hotel is full of guests, the employees have to work hard making beds, cleaning rooms, etc. If the hotel is empty, everybody can sit around and drink tea, smoke and read the newspaper. Either way, the employees get the same pay because the hotel can be indifferent to the profit and loss ledger. Very often in the 1970’s and 80’s, we’d be told that there were no rooms when in fact the hotel was near empty. The great weakness of the Chinese Socialist System was the lack of material incentives. When China opened up to the western world in 1979, tourists began streaming in wearing good shoes, carrying expensive cameras and spending wads of money. Chinese citizens began questioning as to why their Socialist system and all the Socialist countries in the world were so much poorer than the

The one-child policy began in 1979 by which time this happy man already had two sons and a daughter. The policy began phasing out in 2015. There were many campaigns telling people by loudspeaker, posters and TV to “cherish your daughter” and saying that daughters are more filial than sons.

In every region of China one sees a wide variety of devices, usually of cloth, invented by women for carrying their infant children. Throughout Chinese history women in all but the wealthiest of homes were charged with feeding the family, running the household and often working in the fields, too. Meanwhile, they still had the responsibility for caring for the children, hence the need for a sling to keep a child close at hand while performing these chores. From the imperial periods to the beginning of the twentieth century, her relationship with her family was in accord with the teachings of Confucius. Family members were subordinate to the eldest male. Because daughters would marry into another family, they were considered a “small happiness.” After her husband died, a mother would be subordinate to her son.

Datong in Shanxi province was a grimy coal-mining town in north China with coal dust everywhere. From the third to sixth century CE, it was a famous center for Buddhism and well known as far south as Ceylon. It was unpleasant to be there but the colossal Yungang statuary is there and well worth the effort to see it.

Why such massive sculptures? Same reason the colossal cathedrals in Europe were built: to be awesome and enduring. Imperial patronage for Buddhism waxed and waned with wooden monasteries subject to intentional destruction, usually by fire. These sculptures were built to last. Originally they had wooden protective shelters but they deteriorated or burned. Now the art is subject to weathering and air pollution. Over the years, American and European collectors looted many but most remain intact and are being restored by the PRC government.

This elderly Lamist monk living in Lijiang escaped years earlier from Tibet during the invasion by the Peoples’ Liberation Army. Many great monasteries, some housing up to three thousand monks, were dynamited and completely destroyed.

On a remote and rocky dirt road in the mountains of Sichuan, I came upon this easy-going truck driver plucking out a tune by the roadside for his own amusement. Drivers were a relatively privileged class in China. That explains his wristwatch. Travel in this era was restricted; one needed a letter from one’s production unit to buy a long-distance bus ticket or a train ticket. Air travel was even more restricted and favored people of high rank. The communists knew that freedom to travel freely around China had been essential for their organizing, fomenting and then leading their revolution to gain power. Party organizers had met secretly in hotels, which is why after they gained power they so closely monitor hotels in China. Guest lists must be turned in to the police every night. In 1979 the hotels even held guests’ passports until they departed just in case the police wanted to inspect or confiscate them. This driver is whiling away his time while waiting for an accident to be cleared or an argument over right-of-way to be settled. Either could take hours. That explains how I came to take the photo, i.e. my vehicle was also stalled in the same traffic jam. Travel would give someone like a truck driver opportunity for all kinds of graft and access to rare commodities. Shoes from factories often manage to leak out the back doors. A driver could buy up these shoes, put it in with his authorized load and take them to an area where shoes were scarce and thereby fetch a high price and so on. Giving a ride to someone unauthorized to travel could provide a small profit, enough to buy a wristwatch or a nice musical instrument.

After 1949, when Mao took control of China, property was confiscated from landowners, divided up among the farmers and communes were formed. During the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, schools were closed and students were forced to work on the communes along with the farmers. A commune is a collective made up of military-like units of 30,000 people and sub-divided into Work Brigades down to Work Teams. These collectives, highly unpopular and less productive than small farms, were abandoned in the 1980’s. It was one of Mao’s great failures. Many of my wife’s relatives were forced to work on the communes. Brothers and sisters were intentionally separated from each other and assigned to different communes located hundreds of miles away. Not knowing when they would see their homes again, many workers died from a combination of depression and poor medical care. Most simply accepted their fate and adjusted to their conditions. Others were made stronger in character in their will to survive. In the photo is a rotary winnowing machine. The Chinese invented it in the second century BCE, 1,800 years before it appeared in Europe.

This exceptionally well-built log cabin is in the Yunnan Mountains located along the upper reaches of the Golden Sands River that eventually becomes the mighty Yangtze. China still has frontiers in western Yunnan and the far northern reaches of Heilongjiang Province on the Russian border. The constructions of dwellings usually reflect the abundance of materials in the local area. Structures like this often double as a store and living quarters combination.

This is the Panjia yuan flea market in southeast Beijing where authentic antiques can be found with fakes mixed amongst them. Museum curators are known to prowl the aisles either to add to their private collections or to spot something precious that should be in a museum.ÊMao figurines are set out side-by-side with three thousand year old pots from Gansu province. ÊOn any Saturday or Sunday, regardless of weather, you would find over five thousand intent buyers in this market known by the locals as the Ghost Market. The nickname the Ghost Market originated from the custom of sellers bringing valuable items to sell in the pre-dawn darkness before the police began their patrols. In pitch-black darkness, it was ghostly to see figures moving here and there with flashlights in one hand and a magnifying glass in the other doing their best to differentiate the fakes from the real. In the Imperial period, excavating a tomb was punishable by death without trial. In modern times, a flourishing market in China and abroad for excavated artifacts, including porcelain and bronze, has brought tomb robbers considerable wealth.

This is an aerial view of China’s far western border in the Uighur “Autonomous” Region. It is not truly autonomous at all, for China rules the region with an iron fist because the Uighurs sees China as an occupier. There is continual unrest in this region and the unrest predates the 1949 establishment of the PRC. The old Silk Road traversed this area and crossed these mountains into the Middle East and Europe. Before the Western “discovery” of the sea routes to China, this Central Asian route, once traveled by Marco Polo and was China’s “front door.” 

After 1979, farmers were allowed to sell their surplus directly to the public. Street vendors would normally be members of the farmers’ family. Farmers living close to urban centers fared much better than farmers located in remote regions because of the opportunities for direct selling and cash income. There were no vendor rules. You could plunk your stuff down just about anywhere as long as you were not interfering with anything. That was your space. Later on, city governments designated specific areas for farmers and gradually these areas were improved. Starting as dirt lots, they were eventually paved. Later, a roof was added, plumbing installed and finally, toilets were available. But as always in China, the further out from the cities you went, the less these improvements were seen. Vendors like these selling pineapple, grapes and guavas have disappeared from the major cities now and can only be found in the smaller provincial towns and rural villages.

In 1979, a small transaction was not a casual affair. In a struggle for survival, bargaining, careful supervision of the weighing and the exact counting of change was a normal way of life. This simple inexpensive portable scale has been used in China for centuries.

For centuries, flash floods and devastating mudslides have been a serious problem in China. During the rainy season from June to August, flash floods are the cause of many deaths. The problem is exacerbated by the lack of infrastructure, corruption, deforestation and soil erosion. In China’s remote mountain areas, flooding and mudslides are common. Here, I found myself in two feet of muddy water as a flash flood suddenly swept through this tiny remote village and citizens salvaged what they could. A short while later it was all over and the people went back to repairing their homes.

Several villages in a region, about half the size of an American county, are organized into a marketing network. On specified days of the month, each village, in rotation, will host the region’s market day. Buyers and sellers will flock to the designated village and for that one day, the village becomes filled with people, baskets, carts and ponies with crops and merchandise of all kinds on display. Market days are very festive. When the traders come from the surrounding areas, the teamsters have an area set aside as their parking lot for carts and animals. This is an opportunity for the teamsters to gamble, gossip, exchange local news or just relax and smoke. After market day the waste from the animals is collected and used as fertilizer. Human and animal waste is always recycled.

This woman is proud for having both a boy and a girl during the one child policy era. Her home was no worse than anyone else’s. For nearly 40 years of Mao’s rule, investment went to heavy industry and not into housing. Since people could not own their homes there was little incentive for maintenance.

This farm couple lives in Yunnan, near the Stone Forest, a cluster of fascinating karst formations. They consented to their portrait only if I included their statue of Chairman Mao. The inscription on the pedestal says “Long Live Chairman Mao.” They are members of the Sanyi minority where women prefer traditional garments but the men favor plain work clothes.

Lijiang is mainly populated by the Naxi minority with a history of over 1,000 years. This marvelously well-preserved ancient town is famous for the clean and clear water channels that stream through every neighborhood. It served as an important trade center during the Old Tea Horse Caravan Trail days. The mud brick and timber construction was learned from Nanjing traders centuries ago and local carpenters still use this building technique working without blueprints. Traveling from Kunming to Lijiang in 1979 took two twelve-hour days of hard driving over unpaved roads carrying my own gas in jerry cans. “That’s nothing,” a WWII veteran said. “When I came out before the war it was a two-week mule ride.” Today there is a railroad line, a fast highway and an airport as Lijiang has developed into a popular tourist destination.

It is said that as far back as 1000 CE the Chinese were treating toothaches with arsenic and filling tooth cavities with silver amalgam, and that several methods of treating dental problems were introduced ahead of Western countries. However, proper dental hygiene was not in conspicuous practice in any of the years of my travel in China, and modern dental equipment and methods were only available in larger urban centers.  The advertising banner for this village dental clinic reads: “In all the world, first class.” “Be able to eat your fill and look good too.” “Expert methods, quick, no pain.”

In spite of the rapid modernization of China, the traditional patterns of farm life remain unchanged in the remote areas such as Southern Yunnan Province. This photo was taken in Xishuang Banna, a minority area in southwest China near the Burmese border. Houses here more closely resemble those throughout SE Asia than they do traditional Chinese architecture. The question is how long will it remain unaffected.

In Xishuang Banna, near the border with Burma, the pattern of life has not changed much in the last 100 years except for the advent of rural busses and the introduction of electricity. The architecture and the carefully terraced hills are of Southeast Asian origins. Very often, the children care for these large animals.

The Dai and Han people are the majority in the Xishuang Banna region of Yunnan, China. They mostly live in the mountains and are socially dominant. The non-Dai ethnic minorities live in the basins. The architecture, language and culture in the Xishuang Banna region have similar characteristics of the Tai peoples. Traveling on a country road you can expect yak in the north, buffalo anywhere, sheep, an overturned truck, a flock of school kids or a herd of cattle. More than once I saw drivers doing motor overhauls right on the road.

Xishuang Banna is in Yunnan Province where it borders on Burma and Laos. The harvested pineapple crop is being hand-loaded on to shallow-draft boats for transporting into town. Family members and villagers are mobilized to the task of bringing the harvest from the fields to the riverbank for loading into the boats. Lacking a boat dock, farmers wade out into the stream with their baskets of pineapple. Climate, crops, housing and lifestyle in this area blend together the Southeast Asian and Chinese cultures. In this era (1980s), there were no facilities for post-harvest storage so there was a great rush to get a harvest to market. An American professor of food science at UC Davis estimated that almost half of ChinaÕs perishable crops at this time were lost for want of proper storage facilities.

Xishuang Banna is in Yunnan Province where it borders on Burma and Laos. The harvested pineapple crop is being hand-loaded on to shallow-draft boats for transporting into town. Family members and villagers are mobilized to the task of bringing the harvest from the fields to the riverbank for loading into the boats. Lacking a boat dock, farmers wade out into the stream with their baskets of pineapple. Climate, crops, housing and lifestyle in this area blend together the Southeast Asian and Chinese cultures. In this era (1980s), there were no facilities for post-harvest storage so there was a great rush to get a harvest to market. An American professor of food science at UC Davis estimated that almost half of China’s perishable crops at this time were lost for want of proper storage facilities.

In the Xishuang Banna region of Yunnan, China, dwellings and clothing are similar to those in nearby Southeast Asian countries. The custom of older children caring for the younger is centuries old all over Asia. Throughout China there is a distinct variety of ways of carrying an infant in a sling on the back to keep hands free for work. The child being carried is wearing a tiger-striped hat to frighten off bad elements and to protect the child. In days past children would wear some sort of amulet around the neck that was to serve the same purposeÑsomething to keep the child tethered to this earth and not carried away to the netherworld. Children often went barefooted in the southern countryside for shoes were not necessary in the warm climate. Straw sandals were common and later on canvas and rubber shoes identical to those manufactured for the Peoples Liberation Army were used. Leather shoes were scarce, expensive and unnecessary in the 1980s.

Xishuang Banna is in Yunnan Province where it borders on Burma and Laos. The harvested pineapple crop is being hand-loaded on to shallow-draft boats for transporting into town. Family members and villagers are mobilized to the task of bringing the harvest from the fields to the riverbank for loading into the boats. Lacking a boat dock, farmers wade out into the stream with their baskets of pineapple. Climate, crops, housing and lifestyle in this area blend together the Southeast Asian and Chinese cultures. In this era (1980s), there were no facilities for post-harvest storage so there was a great rush to get a harvest to market. An American professor of food science at UC Davis estimated that almost half of ChinaÕs perishable crops at this time were lost for want of proper storage facilities.

Xishuang Banna is in Yunnan Province where it borders on Burma and Laos. The harvested pineapple crop is being hand-loaded on to shallow-draft boats for transporting into town. Family members and villagers are mobilized to the task of bringing the harvest from the fields to the riverbank for loading into the boats. Lacking a boat dock, farmers wade out into the stream with their baskets of pineapple. Climate, crops, housing and lifestyle in this area blend together the Southeast Asian and Chinese cultures. In this era (1980s), there were no facilities for post-harvest storage so there was a great rush to get a harvest to market. An American professor of food science at UC Davis estimated that almost half of China’s perishable crops at this time were lost for want of proper storage facilities.

This is the front of a rural school in Hubei Province in central China in 1991. As a result of longstanding government policies that restricted foreigners, these youngsters had never seen a foreigner before. Regardless, I was politely received and the children happily posed for this picture. They had a natural and reserved curiosity.

On the left is a walkway built for tourists across the face of the cliff. China’s spectacular Huangshan National Park has many such paths made by workers who were suspended by ropes to drill holes for the horizontal supports. Over the years many improvements have been made in the park to make ever more spectacular areas accessible as China modernizes and promotes its tourism.

The mountain town of Lijiang, a Naxi minority village in Yunnan Province, was an important trading center during the Ancient Tea Horse Road period over 800 years ago. The blending of several cultures contributes to the architecture of the old town that has been well preserved. The Naxi culture has a music, writing and religious style much different than the majority of Chinese. In the early 1980s, it took me two days of hard driving over bumpy roads to reach it, but the degree to which it was preserved made it well worthwhile. It is now a major tourist attraction.

This mountain town of Lijiang in Yunnan Province is one of the most interesting places in all China. Previously remote and reachable only by two days of hard driving over jarring roads, it now has a highway that has made it a popular tourist destination. Home of the Naxi people with their own language and writing system, it is distinctive not only for its culture and scenic beauty, but also for its system of water channels that run down every street, all of them flowing with clear mountain spring water.

Sanya fishermen on the southern beach of Hainan Island enjoyed a quiet isolation until Chinese Tourism exploded beginning in the late 1990’s. Now the beaches are lined with swank tourist hotels. The island is promoted in Japan as China’s Hawaii.

Sanya fishermen on this southern beach of Hainan Island enjoyed a quiet isolation until Chinese Tourism exploded beginning in the late 1990’s. Now the beaches are lined with swank tourist hotels. The island is promoted in Japan as China’s Hawaii. In 110 BC, the Han dynasty established a military garrison here and later abandoned it in 46 BC as too expensive to control. About that time Chinese from the mainland began migrating here. The island was considered such a primitive wilderness that it was considered by the throne as a suitable place for exiling court officials who had displeased the emperor. In 1945 the Chinese Nationalist government took full control and the island became one of the last places taken over by the communists.

West Lake is the centerpiece of what is regarded as ChinaÕs most beautiful city, Hangzhou. In 1979 almost the entire shoreline was blocked off from the public by government agencies that had eagerly seized shoreline properties for themselves as retreats for their highly placed employees. By the late 1990Õs these villas were removed and most of the shoreline opened to the public as tourism had become a major business in China. The hills in the suburbs are covered with tea plantations. The Dragon Well, famous and well known, is in those hills. It is theÊnamesake of the famous tea known as Dragon Well Tea.

The Communist Party policies during its first decades ruled out any overt expressions of romance and Party permission was required for marriage. After 1979 these policies were relaxed. This couple could now sit together on the shore of West Lake, but not too close. That freedom would not come until the 1990’s.

This student was waiting for the light of dawn to begin her study for her college entrance exams. The exam included heavy doses of Marxism and Maoism. “We know it’s useless,” she said, “but we need it to pass the exams.” Many students in Hangzhou waited for daylight like this in parks all across China. They said their homes were too dark, too cramped and too noisy for study.

China’s population includes over 50 different nationalities speaking different languages, wearing different clothes and dwelling in distinct districts. Historically discriminated against by the dominant Han majority (over 90 %), they have gradually been pushed from the fertile flatlands to the ever-higher mountain areas. Most are located in Southwestern China. The PRC government has worked to make amends for prejudiced treatment by past governments. More recently, the PRC is finding them of ever-greater value to the tourist industry. This photo was taken near the Jinsha River in Yunnan where many of the Miao people live.

China’s population includes over 50 different nationalities, all speaking different languages, wearing different clothes and dwelling in distinct districts. Historically discriminated against by the dominant Han majority (over 90 %) they have gradually been pushed from the more fertile flatlands to ever higher mountain areas. Most are located in Southwestern China. The PRC government has worked to make amends for treatment by past governments, and more recently is finding them of great value to the tourist industry. This was taken near the Jinsha River in Yunnan where many Miao people live. The women tend to wear native dress while the men prefer simple work clothes.

Her head covering tells us she is a member of one of China’s 55 or so national minorities. She has expertly embroidered her brightly colored scarf far more flamboyantly than any Han woman would dare which is common among the minorities. The Han are China’s dominant majority and bearers of China’s historical culture.

In 1979, people in northern Shaanxi Province were still living in caves. In the countryside, one-cylinder tractors converted to mini-trucks were slowly replacing pony carts that have been in use for over 2000 years. For hundreds of years, the combination of China’s government policies and the extreme and vast remoteness of the country made a white foreigner a rare visitor. These girls are surprised to see a foreigner and greeted me with amusement and puzzlement. But when I spoke out in fluent Chinese there was a warm response and hospitality.

Mao Zedong famously said, “Women hold up half the sky.” Certainly in China they also hold up a good share of the loads as well. This woman is bringing fuel home for the cooking fire. Around the time this photo was taken a cancer map conducted in Yunnan Province showed a high incidence of lung cancer among only women. Researchers puzzled over this for some time before realizing it was smoke from cooking fires made from a certain botanical material in the area was the cause.

These are the upper rapids of the Jinsha (Golden Sands) River in Yunnan Province before it expands to become the mighty Yangze River. The Yangtze, the Mekong and the Irawaddy Rivers all begin near each other in the melting glaciers of Tibet, but only the Yangtze bends eastward to flow into the Pacific Ocean near Shanghai, while the others irrigate Southeast Asia. The woman with the packhorse is a member of the Naxi minority. In this remote region there were two minorities with lifestyles very distinct from the national majority people, the Han: one group practiced slavery until the late 1950’s. When interviewed, members of this group who were slaves said their greatest goal in life was to themselves own slaves. The other group featured a matriarchal society whereby women headed the household. A daughter who took in a husband under terms that put the husband under the rule of the mother. Women were free to sleep with any number of men until finally selecting one for a lifelong mate. Should children be born of any liaison that child joined the mother’s household and there was no opprobrium attached to the matter.

Photographer/professor Don Gibbs in a rock quarry in the Yunnan Mountains that doubled as a reformatory for young men arrested for fighting. In this photo taken by a fellow inmate, they have swapped hats and enjoying each other’s company. This remote prison did not need fences. There were no incentives to escape because travel without a permit was forbidden and police blanketed the country. In addition, the mountains were extremely steep and the rapids surrounding the quarry too swift and dangerous to cross. An American group attempted to ride the rapids with state-of-the-art equipment but failed. The Chinese subsequently launched their own expedition to shoot the same rapids and many lives were lost. Eventually a Chinese team did make it through safely. A nearby mountain called Yulong Xueshan, or Jade Snow Mountain, had never been climbed when I was there in 1987. That year, an American team of mountaineers headed by a man from Davis, California, made an attempt to reach the summit. They were turned back by blizzards near the top. It was a bitter disappointment having to come off the mountain and go home. There was a lot of publicity before the climb and much work to get permission from the Chinese government. Such is the terrain surrounding this reformatory. Eventually, the first team to reach the summit was from Japan. Thereafter many Chinese teams were also successful.

Photographer/professor Don Gibbs posing on tractor-truck conversion. The loads piled on were staggering. The springs just ahead of the rear wheel are down flat from the load.

The clutter, lack of paving, no sidewalks and the loud speakers on the tower are typical of an ordinary urban center in 1987 China. During the Cultural Revolution when all of China was locked into a kind of semi-military mode, every village, town and city had these loud speakers and the same program coming out of them for the entire nation. At dawn, the citizens were awakened by loud martial music blaring out of those powerful loud speakers placed all over town. The music was followed by a female voice shouting callisthenic commands. By 1979, this morning routine had faded away just about everywhere except for the relatively backwater towns such as this one.

The construction of housing fell far behind the population growth that followed the establishment of the PRC in 1949. During the next three decades, families and newlyweds were desperate for a place of their own. With the help of family members, ramshackle homes were built using whatever materials available and building on any space they could find. Flimsy housing were built against compound walls, on public sidewalks and on land beside roads and bridges. Here, two homes have been built over a river. In the late 1990’s, the government introduced a campaign to rid these illegal and unsightly structures to present a better image to the outside world and promote international tourism.

These stout little Yunnanese ponies found all over the provinces are depended upon to do much of the transportation work. The carters haul passengers as well as cargo. The charge was for distance unless a load was particularly heavy, and of course it involved a lot of spirited haggling. The Chinese have been using ponies for over 2,500 years and are still in use in many areas of the country.

Competition for road space became intense and dangerous with the introduction of motorized vehicles. This “Iron ox” tractor, as they were called, competed with the traditional pony carts for business. Both were indispensable short-haul passenger vehicles and equally uncomfortable on the bumpy dirt roads. The Iron Ox was produced as a tractor but overproduction in the face of under-supply of public transport inspired people to convert them to mini-trucks. Unfortunately, injuries and fatalities were too common in the cities and countryside as trucks, busses and homemade vehicles shared the roads with pony carts.

Minority women coming to town to shop in their quick-stepping Yunnanese pony cart. The adobe brick constructed building behind the cart is the town clinic.

Most Yunnanese ponies wear a leather collar ringed with bells so that they tinkle with every step and the effect of a convoy of ponies is very charming. In 1979 long strings of these ponies entered Kunming City every morning bringing fresh produce to market. The small wooden contraption on the pony’s back is for fastening cargo and for hitching a wagon. These ponies are patient, docile, hard-working and sure-footed animals. Every morning just at dawn I would hear a long train of about twenty ponies passing by my hotel. The sound of so many pony bells was unforgettable. Truck replacements and exhaust fumes can never match that charm.

This pony cart with passengers is travelling through Yunnan Province on a section of the old Burma Road that was made famous in WWII. It has now been replaced by a modern superhighway. For over 2,500 year, little Yunnanese pony carts like this one were a common sight. The ponies are hardy and the passengers who rode in such carts had to be hardy too, for the roads were rough. There were no springs on the wagon and no cushions on the seats.

China is a fiercely hierarchical country. We see this in human relationships as well as throughout society, including on the roads. Big trucks automatically have the right of way everywhere and at all times. Busses can bully automobiles, cyclists have no rights against autos, and cyclists show little concern for pedestrians. So also on the waterways, as we see here, with two rafters frantically trying to avoid a ferry. The rafters are floating logs down the Yangtze River to a lumber mill. Building materials were in high demand for housing at this time because for the first thirty years of the PRC all resources were devoted to heavy industry. Mao was obsessed with the idea of building up China’s military strength so that China would never again be put under the guns of the Western Powers. This policy resulted in too little housing built for China’s rapidly increasing population.

The paddy in the foreground has been plowed, flooded and ready for smoothing and planting. Behind it, a farmer is planting seedlings that have been grown in a richly fertilized special plot out of sight. On the left someone is bringing two more baskets of seedlings for the planter. All of this backbreaking stoop labor is conducted from dawn to dusk. In the south where the weather is warm, triple cropping means there is no respite during the winter months such as occurs in the north.

This boy is leading the oxen while his father handles the plow in the same way it has been done for centuries all over Asia. His father was considered very fortunate to have a son during the one child only era. There are no government pensions for farmers, so a son ensures the economic survival of the family in addition to carrying on the familyÕs name. Farming, by its very nature, is labor intensive. Under government and economic pressure, triple cropping has become common in the south and in turn subjects farmers to a relentless year round work routine.

“Snake oil” salesmen were common throughout small villages as well as large cities. China still has a long way to go in such matters as standards for medical and pharmaceutical products. These hawkers also served as a form of entertainment making people laugh and listen avidly. In the rural villages people tend to take them seriously. The police often run them along, especially when they block traffic or attract too large a crowd.

Sidewalk shops such as this simple fabric store quickly sprouted up everywhere after the end of the Cultural Revolution. Chinese people have no problems with free enterprise. In the 1960’s, a Harvard professor said, “No one knows what shape Chinese society will take once they take the bands off.” He also said, “Scratch any Chinese and you find a businessman.” In 1978, free enterprise did not exist. By the late 1980’s, there were many privately owned Chinese companies. Many businessmen became millionaires by the turn of the century. First came the sidewalk vendors, the roving knife sharpeners, soft drink stands and the hole-in-the-wall restaurants. Then small bricks and mortar businesses appeared followed by factories and big stores within the period of two decades. This economic frenzy was fueled by a long history of oppression, war, and government economic policies resulting in the scarcity of goods for the individual. While sailing down the Yangtze in 1979, I met a passenger who was really excited because he had heard he’d be able to buy a pair of leather shoes in the next port, which was Nanjing. Nothing of the kind available for the next thousand miles upstream from Nanking, he said.