Portrait of an LBX

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

A farmer in Inner Mongolia carries a harvest of grasses on his back to be put on a horse cart and taken into the nearby village.

A Tibetan yak herder gestures while telling us about the anti-Chinese protests in his town in 2008, part of a larger series of protests and rioting across Tibet and Tibetan areas in Sichuan that took place in the lead-up to the Olympics. He was jailed for 20 days for his part in the protests, while others we met had been imprisoned for as long as a year. The large army presence in this area is evidence of how closely Tibetans and their religion are monitored and restricted in China.

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?

Once we left Guangxi and the misty/drizzly weather we had been experiencing for over a week, we immediately found ourselves in the midst of a severe drought in the mountains of Yunnan where it has not rained for six months. We met a local farmer on the road, who has little to do because he can't plant his fields. Judging by his friendliness, love of hand-holding and the alcohol on his breath, however, I'd say he's found a tolerable pastime until the rains come.