Portrait of an LBX

A husband and wife coolie (苦力) couple transports cases of baijiu across the out-of-commission bridge across Chishui River (赤水河) in Maotai (茅台鎮).

The only bridge in Maotai (茅台鎮) crossing the Chishui River (赤水河) was closed to vehicles for repair, so anything needing to be transported had to be done by hand. And I used to wonder why there were so many hunchbacked elderly in this country.

A worker at a baijiu factory shovels sorghum out of the steamer. The sugars are fermented in the grain in a pit, then dug out and distilled by steaming the grain. The process is repeated seven times. As nearly everyone in the town of Maotai (茅台镇) is employed either on the floor of a baijiu factory or as a coolie, there are a lot of ridiculously ripped people walking around.

A Bouyei (布依族) man in a long line of other Bouyei men and women hauls watermelons from the river to the road above. Many of these porters were in sandles, busted shoes, or barefoot. The watermelons sell for 2 yuan ($0.29) per kilogram in Guiyang.

A Bouyei (布依族) man pauses from his work hauling watermelons from the boats to the road above.

Bouyei (布依族) women pass watermelons in a line from a boat to a truck, which will take the watermelons to Guiyang to be sold. I don't know why more of the trucks weren't down at the river like this one.

Bouyei (布依族) women unload a boat full of watermelon. The watermelons are brought downstream by boat from a Bouyei village with no road transport. There was only one guy around besides us who wasn't there for the watermelons. See if you can spot him.

An ethnic Bulang (布朗族) girl walks through a village on Bulang Mountain (布朗山).

After finishing up in the paddies, a man takes his water buffalo back to the homestead.

A woman carries a load of firewood down a treacherous slope in two bamboo baskets hung from a bamboo pole across her back. While the U.N. says that China has brought more people out of poverty in the past forty years than in any other country in history, many among China's massive rural population of some 800 million are still struggling to survive.