A: I delight in the challenges that a country like China poses to westerners. Sure, I occasionally catch myself pounding the wall in frustration, but the thing about the PRC is that every turn is a new adventure. For me there’s nothing worse than being bored, and boredom is just not possible in China. See these lines on my face? They weren’t there before.
Jiangsu
Q: How did you plan your routes?
A: I haven’t planned a single route since I arrived in China four years ago. I just point myself in a direction, then let life carry me on its current. Not only does every Chinese person you ask where to go have an excitedly different opinion – even about which way is north – but there are so many undiscovered villages that are off the charts. Not to mention that the time it takes to get to these places is often days longer than how it appears on a map, making an itinerary kind of pointless.
Q: Tell us more about surprises along the way, and any dangerous situations you’ve been in.
A: Surprises are the rule, not the exception. In addition to clashes with the authorities over my pictures, I’ve had everything from a near-lethal bout of encephalitis during my first year in China, to getting shanghaied by crooked English schools, which I wrote about for the Wall Street Journal. One of my favourites is the time I found myself at the business end of a North Korean machine gun when I accidentally crossed into the DPRK at Changbaishan. These are all stories I can laugh about now, though my mother doesn't think so.
Heilongjiang
Q: It’s said that China is now undergoing the most prolonged period of sustained change in history. How has it changed since you have lived there, and how will it change in the near future?
A: I think China's most dramatic changes have been brought on by itself and that the now-clichéd term “New China” was something methodically planned out in their boardrooms. The Chinese government is addicted to what I call hyper-urbanization. You’ve got historic cities like Beijing, where they are bulldozing these ancient hutongs by the hour so they can build office towers, or the 2,000-year-old village of Gongtan in Chongqing that is going to be levelled this summer for a new power plant. I wrote an article about Gongtan for a local magazine but it was quickly quashed because the censorship bureau said “We don’t want to bring any attention to that place.” These contrasts in architecture appear in my book because I feel it is imperative to capture this last glimpse of China’s old slate rooftops before the skyline becomes pure steel and glass. CHINA: Portrait of a People will probably become a history book, something Chinese people will look at twenty years from now and say “Ah yes, I remember.”
Q: It seems like everyone wants to know more about China these days. Do you see more people planning on visiting the country?
A: China will become the world’s largest tourism destination of the next decade, no doubt about it. The 2008 Beijing Olympics and Shanghai’s World Expo in 2010 are expected to attract between 50 to 100 million tourists annually. China’s doors were closed for so long that it’s only natural the world is curious about what’s behind them. What the pictures in Portrait of a People are doing is fuelling this curiosity by offering an intimate glimpse of humanity in China, and scenes of daily life that even publications like National Geographic overlook.
Beijing
Q: You’re something of an authority now on Chinese travel. Can you offer any tips for travellers?
A: Well, what China wants tourists to see is often at variance with what is actually marvellous about the country. You’ve got these highly-sheltered tour group packages that cover the Forbidden City in Beijing, the Terracotta Warriors in Shaanxi, a boat ride on the Yangtze and shopping in Shanghai [makes yawning noise]. Or you can remove yourself from the souvenir shops and luxury hotels, get a local street map and travel on word-of-mouth. Lonely Planet would go bankrupt if people actually took my travel advice, but you definitely see more of the real China my way.
BPJ Editor.
Tom Carter and Hannah Hong
CHINA: Portrait of a People, by Tom Carter
Genre: Travel / Photography / Art / China
ISBN-13: 978-988-99799-42
Size: 15cm x 15cm, soft cover, 640 pages, 800 full color images, with maps of each province
Published: Summer 2008 by Blacksmith Books, Hong Kong, in association with Haven Books
Price: HK$280 / US$35.95
