Poor Accommodations
HAI ZHANGDecades of unprecedented economic growth have affected the lives of more than a generation of mainland Chinese and reshaped the urban structure of cities. China has become one of the most exciting and permissive places in the world to practice architecture.From 2009 to early 2010...
Welcome to Wuwucun, a Village in the City
MARK LEONGTucked amidst the factories and shops of of the Longgang district of the southern boomtown of Shenzhen sits a handful of narrow Qing Dynasty lanes collectively called Wuwucun, after the original Hakka minority Wu clan who established the village in the early nineteenth century....
China’s Footprint in Myanmar
SIM CHI YINPresident Barack Obama’s visit to Yangon (also known as Rangoon) today shines a spotlight on a story that has already captured the world’s attention: namely, the remarkable political transformation that has been underway over the past year in Myanmar. Looming large in the...
Growth
JAMES WHITLOW DELANOThe photographer James Whitlow Delano says he finds beauty in melancholy. For more than two decades, he has sought it out around the edges of the often ebullient story of China’s economic rise. His book Empire: Impressions from China, published in 2005, focused on loss of...
The Rat Tribe
SIM CHI YIN, VII THE MAGAZINEThe evening sun sits low in the smoggy Beijing sky. Beneath a staid, maroon apartment block, Jiang Ying, 24, is stirring from her bed after having slept through the day. Day is night and night is day anyway in the window-less world she inhabits three floors below ground.Pint-...
Being Bingbing
RIAN DUNDONFan Bingbing has been in the spotlight since she was sixteen. Today, she is one of the most well-known actresses in China. Initially celebrated as a teenager for her roles in the TV dramas that play to captive audiences across China’s provinces, she has since reinvented herself...
The Benches of Tiananmen
GILLES SABRIÉTiananmen Square. Center of China, theater set of the Chinese Communist Party’s biggest political shows, Mecca of millions and yet a void in the city. No Beijinger in his right mind would ever suggest “meet me at the Square.” Tourists find no place to sit; they can only...
Heteroscapes of Chongqing
BO WANG“Heteroscapes” is a portrait of China’s contemporary urban spaces and landscapes during a period of transition. Through the economic boom of the past twenty years, these changes have shifted social power structures and subverted once common values. Equally as dramatic have...
Transported by Song: A Traveling Opera Hits the Road
GILLES SABRIÉSeven days a week eight hours a day, the members of the Sanjin Shanxi Opera Troupe impersonate princes, generals, and emperors. These performers are keeping alive one of China’s oldest traditions: its opera. Almost every region of the country has its own style of traditional...
Wukan Daily Life
SIM CHI YINWhile village elections are widespread in China, it’s rare for the Party not to exert pressure over the selection of candidates. When the Guangdong province village of Wukan held elections in February and March 2012, however, they were notably free from interference from above...
Epidemic Proportions
AARON DEEMERApproximately 100-120 million Chinese live with chronic hepatitis B infection. Most acquired the disease at birth, through transmission from an infected mother, or during early childhood. Hepatitis B has touched the lives of virtually every family in China. Without long-term...
My Uncle, My Father
EDWIN KOOIntroductionIn Aguwa village, Yunnan province, the Mosuo continue to practice their ancient tradition of matriarchy. Women rule the tightly-knit families as heads of households, while men practice “walking marriages,” fathering children whom they seldom help raise. Instead,...