I thought I would update everyone on my status. In a few minutes, I will be leaving for Xinjiang. I won’t be taking a computer, but I will be taking the full range of camera equipment, and will hopefully have many weeks of photos to of LBXes in China’s remote northwest region to post when I return. Evan is in America, incommunicado, so there will likely be nothing new on this site for the next two weeks.
See you when I return!
Just for empirical verification purposes, I’m looking for definitions of Laobaixing that any of you might have to share with us. A friend, Devi, recently told me that a certain LBX of her acquaintance described Laobaixing as “people without rights or power” – simple and terribly true. I also recently finished River Town by Peter Hessler, where he describes a similar LBX self-characterization.
That’s a good definition politically, but LBXes are more than just the helpless byproducts of political systems in which they have virtually no 办法 (means) to change anything. As our goal here is more philosophical and pictorial than political, we’re always on the hunt for solid LBX descriptors. To summarize, if you have a good LBX definition from yourself or anybody else, I’d appreciate responses of any length to this post or by email.
A (presumably) homeless man crosses the street at Caihong Bridge in Beijing. As is the case in numerous other developing countries (think: Slumdog Millionaire), many of China's supposedly homeless actually work for organized begging rings -- an incredibly sad situation in itself, but even more so because it brands all beggars as cheats, which surely must make it difficult for those actually in need to find a helping hand.
Tibet is a truly amazing place, as are the Tibetan people. Lhasa, paradoxically crisscrossed by streets with names like "Beijing Road," "Jiangsu Road" and "August First Road," is the destination of multitudes of devout Buddhist pilgrims. This Tibetan woman, praying in the early morning in front of the Jokhang monastery, seems so far removed from the influx of Han Chinese that is quickly making ethnic Tibetans like her a minority in their own home and from the development that is transforming the land of her birth. One day, I would love to return to Tibet or China's other ethnically Tibetan areas and speak with more of the local people to learn about their views on the development around them and its effects their lives and faith.
Evan is in Beijing for 10 days and we took a bike ride last weekend to Sancha Village below the Great Wall. The family we stayed with consists of a husband and wife, who rent out a couple rooms in their house and cook meals, and their elementary school-aged son, who they send to live in the city with a relative during the week to attend school. They also take care of this mentally disabled man, who is friendly and endearing, but doesn't say much. I asked him if I could take his photo, and he closed his eyes and gave me a smile. He is lucky, though. So many of China's disabled citizens have no one to take care of and love them, and many of them wake up to the sight of the underside of an expressway rather than to fresh air, sun and green mountains.
I'm posting this in the spirit of the music festivals that usually occur around this time of year in China. This picture was actually taken at Midi two years ago. Unfortunately, Midi this year was moved outside of Shanghai and the Modern Sky Strawberry Music Festival took its place. I have some pictures from that, but haven't had time to edit them yet. Besides, all the metal heads seemed to be down south at the Midi festival, so Beijing had a much mellower crowd this time around. Volumes have been written about the history of rock in China. I will just say that rock music used to be a somewhat subversive genre in terms of lyrics and the people who followed it (think Cui Jian performing under the Goddess of Democracy in Tiananmen Square, 1989), but now it is much more commercialized and the lyrics are rarely politically charged. Still, this guy is not exactly a poster child for the CCP.
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