China is opening up and disappearing at the same time. As it becomes dominant in the world economy, its cities and people become more and more indistinguishable from those of other developed countries. The typical tourist hot spots—the Great Wall, the Palace in Peking—will endure while the old towns of Shanghai and Guilin have essentially disappeared already. Traditions that endured the Cultural Revolution are quickly succumbing to the new capitalistic economic revolution.
This photographic trip will be a search for the old China, an opportunity to photograph the traditional before it fades away. We will be going to the Great Wall, the terracotta soldiers of Xi'an, and Beijing's Forbidden City, but what we will be doing in addition is visiting as many diverse ethnic groups as possible, as many old villages as we can, and some absolutely gorgeous landscape.
Our tour will concentrate on some less traveled areas in southern China: the provinces of Guilin and Guizhou. We will have the opportunity to photograph everything from fishermen to traditional dancers, calm rivers and reflecting lakes to roaring rapids and high mountains. We will also photograph in the fabulously beautiful Yellow Mountain. All in all, we will photograph each of the archetypal Chinese ink drawing subjects: the fishermen and karst mountains of Guilin, the Great Wall, and the fog-encircled Yellow Mountain.
This trip will be led by Joe Englander, who will be assisted in Guilin Province by the renowned Chinese photographer, Zhang Liping. We will be in Guilin for the full moon and at a time when the rice terraces are at their most photogenic, when they are being harvested by hand in the traditional way.
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