Portrait of an LBX

Old men sit and talk outside of a home in rural Shanxi (山西) province.

Hats were pretty popular at this market on our way out of Yunnan.

Spotted in a small-town market on our way out of Yunnan.

Seen in a small market on our way out of Yunnan.

Watching life go by.

A young farmer carries a load of rice stalks from a paddy where they are planted en masse to the family's paddies elsewhere, where he will transplant them individually by hand.

Sometimes I wonder what story each line on a face would tell if it could.

For the Nong (農) family children, the Zhuang (壯族) Tomb Sweeping Day (三月初三) seemed to be a celebration -- a reason to be out of school and romping through the fields with brothers, sisters and cousins. For the next generation, the day seemed to be more of an obligation -- a thing to be done because that's the way it's always been done, even though some admitted they didn't understand all the proceedings. But whether due to a greater attachment to tradition or the realization that before long their families might be burning money for their own use in the afterlife, the elderly generation took a much more reverent approach to the traditional holiday on which the living care for the dead.

So apparently there's a lot of rice planting going on right now.

A barbershop in a small town in which Evan and I stopped for lunch. Surprisingly, the haircuts took a very long time.