Portrait of an LBX

In the countryside everyone works, even if they need a crutch and a cane to do it.

A family in Gansu loads straw onto a truck after threshing off the grain.

A group of farmers works across a field digging up what I can only assume is some sort of valuable medicinal root. They're probably not cutting the grass with scissors, anyway.

A farmer at a little market on our way out of Yunnan. Yunnan has been great for markets.

Mr. Song, a rice farmer, pauses from his work pulling densely planted rice stalks from a rice paddy where they have been growing for 45 days. The stalks will then be taken by motorcycle to the family's paddies elsewhere to be transplanted individually by hand and then harvested after another four months.

An ethnic Hani (哈尼族) tea farmer looks out over the terraced mountains on which his tea plants grow. While Yunnan is famous for its Pu'er tea (普洱茶), which sells for astronomical prices, this man sells his leaves unprocessed for 2 yuan (29 cents) per half kilo (1.1 lbs), or processed for 6 yuan (89 cents).

During planting and harvesting season, the Hani farmers in the terraced mountain rice paddies of Yuanyang County live in these tiny, thatched-roof huts (田篷) set among the hundreds and thousands of paddies on each mountain.

A Hani (哈尼族) peasant woman walks home through the freshly planted, terraced rice paddies covering the mountains of Yuanyang County, Yunnan. This particular scene is in an area called Tiger Mouth (老虎嘴).

It's said that planting rice is some of the most "bitter" (苦) agricultural work there is. But for whom?

Everybody has their nicest hats on for the market!