Related stories

“There’s one thing about Beijing: It’s not just a city; it’s a people. It has its own flavour.” What's love to got to do with it? The vagaries of Valentine's Day in China Database to Be Available For Parents to Name Babies Tourist Homeage to City's Tragic Past How Many New Long Marchers Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?

Capturing Past Before it Falls to Future...

As Beijing's urban development spreads out into rural areas, village communities are facing great changes -the worst scenario being when many of them disappear altogether. Thus it is timely to take a look at ancient, and just plain old, villages whose presence and survival is just as vital to the fabric of any society as grandiose strucatures and those who inhabit them.

Stretching from plains to the mountains, Beijing's villages all have their own special and different characteristics. Some originated as coal-mining or trading centers. Others quarried stone for a living, or sold kindling. Some functioned as post towns, guardians of tombs or defenders of mountains, rivers and canal crossings. Villages also grew up around important temples or tea stalls along important roads or pilgrim paths.

Imperial order founded villages to serve as builders of forts, or to produce pottery and tiles. Such great variety on the rural scene around the capital reflects both diverse geographical landscapes and importance in the history of Beijing.

More than anything, these villages are at one with their people in retaining the continuity of their community. It is the villagers who have preserved their stories and passed them down as oral history, and who have built and rebuilt their homes and perpetuated their crafts and special livelihoods. Their tradition of cooperation in digging wells, repairing roads and guarding trees at their sacred sites was from the start essential for their community.

Villages also always stand sentinel to their surrounding land. It is the natural environment that gives them food and water, supplies wood for shelter and burning, and stones for walls and foundations. Survival depended, and depends, on seasonal activities bringing forth such images as charcoal briquettes drying in the sun, cornhusk fodder in the pig pen, and golden millet on the threshing ground.

As a way of honoring the villages of Beijing and their culture, I and three other photographers, Ma Huaimin, Hou Yibing and Kosima Weber Liu have created an exhibition to celebrate the beauty of the traditional culture as well as to emphasize its fragility. We come from different backgrounds, experiences and places of birth, but we have a common sensitivity and caring for these places.

Our various angles present both the moss of history found on an old grinding stone and anomalies of contemporary life like a new model car next to its decrepit home. Bird'd eye views of whole villages are contrasted with an intimate close-up of a weathered face. There is both bright color, like the emerald green of new leaves on venerable trees, and monotones of narrow pathways and window lattice-work. Our photos include the inner quiet of workers resting on the heated kang (heated bed) in contrast to the energy of children playing on a village stage. Sometimes only a worn tool is enough to capture years of hard labor.

Today, ancient villages and their traditional culture face many challenges for survival. Urban expansion, modernization, water shortages and population depletion are taking their toll on village life. With many of the villages disappearing so quickly, my colleagues and I want to share their essence through our images and thus, hopefully, try to keep some of their meaning alive. Our exhibition is dedicated to the people of rural Beijing and their special role both in history and contemporary development.