Focus: A Portrait of China Emerging

Focus: A Portrait of China Emerging

The narrative of China's emergence that has predominated in the Western press over the last decade is one of a racially homogenous economic superpower in ascendance; the West seems to characterize China simply in terms of its potential as a huge untapped market to be exploited or as a threat to Western cultural and economic hegemony. This...

Read more: A Portrait of China Emerging

Focus: A Portrait of China Emerging

 

The Festival of the Birth of the Prophet is one of the three most important Islamic festivals, it commemorates the birth and the death of the founder of Islam, Muhammad. On the 5th November 2006, the Festival of the Birth of the Prophet was held at the Pitong township mosque in Pi County, Sichuan. Before the festival, after the mosque's...

Read more: The Festival of the Birth of the Prophet in Pi county, Sichuan

Focus: A Portrait of China Emerging

No more then 20 years ago the Jonang School was studied and described as "a now defunct Tibetan Buddhist school".



The lineage was born at the end of the 13th century, when Kun spangs Thugs rje Brtson ‘grus , a Kalacakra pratictioner, settled in the valley of Jomonang. Focusing on the Kalacakratantra teachings and with a particular vision of...

Read more: The Jonangpas are still alive!

Focus: A Portrait of China Emerging

 The district of Shiqu (Serxu in Tibetan) is located on the border of the Ganze Tibetan Prefecture (Sichuan) where it belongs, the region of Tibet proper and Qinghai province. More than a thousand kilometers away from Chengdu, at an average altitude of 4.526 meters, and twenty-five thousand square kilometers large, the district harbors a...

Read more: Shiqu, the birthplace of King Gesar

Focus: A Portrait of China Emerging

Muli is a tiny multi-ethnic county at the southwest corner of Sichuan province, nearby Yunnan province. On its west, lies the Ganze Tibetan autonomous prefecture. Muli itself is officially called a “Tibetan autonomous county”, though it is located within the “Yi Prefecture” of Liangshan, the Yi being another important ethnic group of...

Read more: Muli, an ethnic frontier

Focus: A Portrait of China Emerging

Though the numbers change according to economic circumstances, an estimated 150-200 million Chinese rural workers are living and working in cities. They often face discrimination in housing, education, healthcare and employment due to their temporary status, though several cities are working towards improving their conditions. Employers often...

Read more: Yi Migrant Workers in Chengdu

Focus: A Portrait of China Emerging

I have travelled many times to Liangshan Prefecture, home of Sichuan’s Yi minority. Reporting on festivals in Zhaojue, Puge or Meigu counties, I have taken countless photographs and made many Yi friends, whom I like to visit each time I am back in Liangshan.



It was only during the summer of 2006, however, that I went to Yanyuan County, in...

Read more: Summer in Yangjuan Pass

Focus: A Portrait of China Emerging

The Yi People (彝族) in Yongren County, Yunnan Provinve, annually organize a grand fashion show during the month of January. The fashion show begins when the women most renowned for their expertise in the art of embroidery walk and dance in a parade, to display both their embroidered costumes and dances. Later on, other women join them, while...

Read more: Fashion Show in the Mountains of Yunnan

Focus: A Portrait of China Emerging

The district of “Shangri La” (formerly called Zhongdian, before a name more prone to attract tourism was adopted in 2001…) is located on the north of Yunnan province, on the southern side of the Tibetan Plateau. The district is located on the frontiers of Yunnan, Sichuan, and Tibet, with an altitude of about 3380 meters above sea...

Read more: Napa Village

Focus: A Portrait of China Emerging

I went to Yangjuan beginning of December 2010. During these 10 years I have been more or less10 times to this little village…



This time my purpose was to see the state of the school we help to start in 2000. The school does not need outside subsidies any more. Now schooling is free and the government is also paying for textbooks. But there...

Read more: December in Yangjuan