Hello.
When I started blogging, back several years ago I was passionate and dilligent. Needless to say things have changed.
With the introduction of social media I feel that services like Facebook and Twitter allow me to express my opinions and feelings on a more regular basis and often with "real time" feedback. So, I had to ask the question a few weeks back: should I continue to blog? The answer was yes, but much less regular. I'll continue to blog when I have something long and profound to say, which is rare to say the least.
Until I can muster up the prose to write something interesting, I'll continue to babble and amuse on my social media pages: You can follow me on Facebook & Twitter for more regular updates.
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Friday, May 13, 2011
Ryan Pyle Blog: Is Brazil the New China?
Hello,
I found this article a few days back on Reuters and I thought to myself, wow.....really? It seems that Foxconn and Apple are teaming up to build iPhones and iPads in Brazil. The reason behind it seems to be that Apple is under-performing in Brazil and the consumer market there is growing rapidly as new wealth expands the middle class. High import taxes seem to price most of these products out of reach for most consumers, so why not build them in Brazil and cut prices.
But I think it's important to look beyond just producing for the Brazil market. Foxconn and Apple will most likely aim to export to the rest of South and Central America as well as the United States, and perhaps even in a few decades Foxconn will ship iPads from Brazil to China.
With China's increasing wages, raising currency and a spurt of suicides last year; it's become obvious that the cost of doing business in China is on the way up. Foxconn need to start thinking global if they want to continue to produce high-tech products. We are also less than a decade away from Foxconn opening up a plant in Africa some where as well.
For those people out there who think that China will always be the workshop of of the world, think again. These jobs now flow across borders like trade winds. The moment a country becomes too expensive or "un-friendly" companies move to other countries offering better tax breaks.
I'll never forget back in 2004 when my landlord in Shanghai was telling me how he just moved his factory to Vietnam because China was getting too expensive - and that was 7 years ago. Times are changing. The Foxconn / Brazil / Apple article is below.
___________________________________________________
Original Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/06/us-brazil-foxconn-idUSTRE7454H120110506
Copyright: Reuters
Foxconn Brazil iPad deal facing barriers: reports
Fri, May 6 2011
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn wants to begin assembling iPads in Brazil by July, but it is still seeking tax breaks and other government concessions as part of an investment plan that could be worth up to $12 billion, Brazilian media reported on Friday.
Foxconn Technology Group, maker of Apple Inc's iPhone and iPad, announced its intention to dramatically ramp up production in Brazil last month during a visit to China by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
Foxconn has moved up its desired start date for assembling iPads in Brazil to July from November, seeking to tap massive demand for the device in Brazil's booming consumer market, according to newspapers Estado de S.Paulo and Folha de S.Paulo. Their reports quoted government officials.
"It's a daring timeline. Whatever is within our reach, we're going to work on making that viable," Science and Technology Minister Aloizio Mercadante told Folha.
Foxconn's plans have generated excitement among Brazilian officials, who are hoping their country can move up the value-added manufacturing chain despite extremely high labor costs, taxes and an overvalued currency that have made business difficult for other factories in recent months.
The project could also give Foxconn and Apple a better foothold in Brazil, where high-tech gadgets are often priced out of the market because of import tariffs and production costs. Apple's cheapest iPad currently retails for about $860 in Brazil, versus $400 in the United States.
Several obstacles remain to the deal's full implementation. Rousseff recently received a long letter from Foxconn chief Terry Tou detailing several conditions for both short-term and long-term investments, the reports said, quoting Mercadante.
The company is negotiating tax incentives for production and other measures that would make it easier to import components for local assembly, the reports said. Foxconn also wants government assistance in dispatching 200 Brazilian engineers to China for training as soon as possible.
Foxconn intends to first begin assembling iPads in Brazil using imported parts, and then start producing screens and other parts locally in coming years, the reports said.
Skilled labor shortages and the likely need for a local partner in the venture have caused some Brazilian economic officials to privately question whether the total investment will reach anywhere near $12 billion, the amount cited by Rousseff last month.
The deal will also require funding from Brazil's BNDES state development bank, Mercadante said, which is under pressure to slow loan growth amid a rise in inflation.
___________________________________________________
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
I found this article a few days back on Reuters and I thought to myself, wow.....really? It seems that Foxconn and Apple are teaming up to build iPhones and iPads in Brazil. The reason behind it seems to be that Apple is under-performing in Brazil and the consumer market there is growing rapidly as new wealth expands the middle class. High import taxes seem to price most of these products out of reach for most consumers, so why not build them in Brazil and cut prices.
But I think it's important to look beyond just producing for the Brazil market. Foxconn and Apple will most likely aim to export to the rest of South and Central America as well as the United States, and perhaps even in a few decades Foxconn will ship iPads from Brazil to China.
With China's increasing wages, raising currency and a spurt of suicides last year; it's become obvious that the cost of doing business in China is on the way up. Foxconn need to start thinking global if they want to continue to produce high-tech products. We are also less than a decade away from Foxconn opening up a plant in Africa some where as well.
For those people out there who think that China will always be the workshop of of the world, think again. These jobs now flow across borders like trade winds. The moment a country becomes too expensive or "un-friendly" companies move to other countries offering better tax breaks.
I'll never forget back in 2004 when my landlord in Shanghai was telling me how he just moved his factory to Vietnam because China was getting too expensive - and that was 7 years ago. Times are changing. The Foxconn / Brazil / Apple article is below.
___________________________________________________
Original Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/06/us-brazil-foxconn-idUSTRE7454H120110506
Copyright: Reuters
Foxconn Brazil iPad deal facing barriers: reports
Fri, May 6 2011
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn wants to begin assembling iPads in Brazil by July, but it is still seeking tax breaks and other government concessions as part of an investment plan that could be worth up to $12 billion, Brazilian media reported on Friday.
Foxconn Technology Group, maker of Apple Inc's iPhone and iPad, announced its intention to dramatically ramp up production in Brazil last month during a visit to China by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
Foxconn has moved up its desired start date for assembling iPads in Brazil to July from November, seeking to tap massive demand for the device in Brazil's booming consumer market, according to newspapers Estado de S.Paulo and Folha de S.Paulo. Their reports quoted government officials.
"It's a daring timeline. Whatever is within our reach, we're going to work on making that viable," Science and Technology Minister Aloizio Mercadante told Folha.
Foxconn's plans have generated excitement among Brazilian officials, who are hoping their country can move up the value-added manufacturing chain despite extremely high labor costs, taxes and an overvalued currency that have made business difficult for other factories in recent months.
The project could also give Foxconn and Apple a better foothold in Brazil, where high-tech gadgets are often priced out of the market because of import tariffs and production costs. Apple's cheapest iPad currently retails for about $860 in Brazil, versus $400 in the United States.
Several obstacles remain to the deal's full implementation. Rousseff recently received a long letter from Foxconn chief Terry Tou detailing several conditions for both short-term and long-term investments, the reports said, quoting Mercadante.
The company is negotiating tax incentives for production and other measures that would make it easier to import components for local assembly, the reports said. Foxconn also wants government assistance in dispatching 200 Brazilian engineers to China for training as soon as possible.
Foxconn intends to first begin assembling iPads in Brazil using imported parts, and then start producing screens and other parts locally in coming years, the reports said.
Skilled labor shortages and the likely need for a local partner in the venture have caused some Brazilian economic officials to privately question whether the total investment will reach anywhere near $12 billion, the amount cited by Rousseff last month.
The deal will also require funding from Brazil's BNDES state development bank, Mercadante said, which is under pressure to slow loan growth amid a rise in inflation.
___________________________________________________
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, May 06, 2011
Ryan Pyle Blog: Article - Hurt on Assignment?
Hello,
In light of some of the world events that have happened this year, an Arab Spring, a Tsunami and a Civil War; there has been a rush of photographers who have selflessly thrown themselves in to danger to report the story visually. Some of been badly injured. Some have died. But do all photographers who report on this kind of news actually know the risks involved and know what can happen to you if you get hurt in the line of work.
This article by Jay Malin is pretty revealing when it comes to just how expendable, and how vulnerable, photographers really are. I'm very found of photographers who can risk their own lives to report on dangerous stories, if it wasn't for them how would we ever know what things "look like" on the ground. But the risks, as we've learned this year, are absolute.
_____________________________________________________________
Copyright: PDN Magazine
ORIGINAL LINK
What To Expect If You’re Injured on Assignment
MAY 03, 2011
By Jay Mallin
[Editor's Note: This article was researched and written in March, weeks before the April 20 rocket attack in Misrata, Libya, which killed two photojournalists and also wounded two others. The injured were not on assignment. Thanks to help from many colleagues, the injured were evacuated and are now recovering; however, we believe the questions this article raises remain relevant.]
When Bangkok-based photographer Philip Blenkinsop returned home after having a bomb blow up a few feet in front of him while photographing in southern Thailand for Time Asia, he got a lesson in the sort of assistance and protection freelancers on assignment can expect from their clients.
“I had a lovely bouquet of flowers waiting for me when I got home,” remembers Blenkinsop. “And I was offered an extra day rate.”
To be fair, Blenkinsop, who had won recognition for his previous work for Time, says he did not ask his editors for any special consideration after the blast, and initial reports indicated his injuries were not serious. But the effects of the 2007 incident left him unable to work for about eight months. Of the flowers and the extra money, he says, “It felt a little like after carrying someone’s bags for 10 kilometers through the streets of Paris or New York, they’d tipped you a dollar, you know?”
With multiple wars, revolutions and a possible nuclear disaster, 2011 is shaping up as an unusually dangerous year for journalists. At least three photographers died in conflicts in the first three months of the year, while others suffered permanent injuries and hazards like kidnapping. Also on the minds of many is Joao Silva, recovering from a mine explosion that took both his legs in Afghanistan.
Incidents like Silva’s might be expected to spark discussions among photojournalists and their photo editors. Instead, many photographers and clients are treating the “what if’s” of a photographer injured or killed in the same way they always have— with silence.
“I don’t know how many years I’ve been working for different magazines [and] I’ve never seen anything in any contract that says anything about what happens if I get shot or killed or get my legs broken,” says Teru Kuwayama, who was injured in a car crash in Pakistan in 2009 that saw the driver killed and another photographer injured.
As for the clients, when contacted by PDN they were uniformly unwilling to talk. Editors and spokespeople either declined to speak for publication or were simply unreachable.
“We don’t discuss personnel matters,” said Daniel Kile, executive director of public relations for Time.
“They just don’t like me talking about it,” explained an editor at another publication.
At The New York Times, which has been praised for hiring long-time freelancer Silva as a staffer after he lost both his legs below the knees to a landmine, an editor was similarly reluctant to say anything.
Photographers themselves seem split between those who’ve never addressed the issue at all, and those who trust in a combination of passed-on lore (“use a platinum American Express card to qualify for free medevac”), half-remembered precedents (an anecdote that photojournalist Tim Page successfully sued Time magazine following his Vietnam-era brain injury), and faith in the compassion and camaraderie of their photo editors.
“[Photographers] assume—especially with publications that they have good relationships with—you make this assumption that they are going to take care of you if something happens,” says Ron Haviv, a photographer with VII Photo Agency who has covered conflicts around the world. “But I don’t think anyone knows in the end what will happen when you start getting people outside our circle involved, like lawyers and corporate people.”
Haviv has it right there, says one editor who was willing to discuss the subject, thanks to having moved on to a job in academia. Tom Kennedy, Alexia Foundation Chair Professor for Documentary Photography at Syracuse, has worked as director of photography for National Geographic and editor for Washingtonpost.com.
“I don’t know that there is an industry standard,” Kennedy says. “I think it’s very much company by company, and I think it is somewhat contingent obviously on what company practice is as dictated by lawyers.” Corporate lawyers may overrule photo editors who want to do what they can for colleagues.
“My experience is that the legal department and to some extent HR [human resources] tend to drive the contractual arrangements that an organization settles on,” Kennedy says. “Most organizations that I am familiar with that are working with freelancers regard them as independent contractors who are responsible for their own insurance, their own well-being.”
That was different at Geographic, he says, where contracts specified that the magazine did take on some of the risks. And conversations with photographers and editors who spoke off the record showed that in some cases, with some publications, magazines do take precautions like buying insurance for photographers being sent into unusually dangerous areas. But it’s often not discussed, and it’s not standard practice.
Veteran photojournalists say there has been an evolution in the industry’s approach to the problem since Operation Desert Storm in 1990. In the Nineties, the Balkan wars and Chechnya coincided with a decision by magazines to turn from assignments and day-rates to space guarantees. With a guarantee, a magazine pays the photographer a minimum fee (expenses are typically not included) in exchange for a first look at the photographers’ pictures. Many photographers believe the move from assignments to the more arm’s length guarantee arrangements made it easier for publications to cut loose freelancers in trouble.
That doesn’t mean they always were cut loose—photographers say there have been many cases where magazine publishing companies have helped photographers, even those who were not on assignment. At the same time, others on assignment found such assistance was not granted. (The local drivers and translators news organizations rely on in dangerous areas are typically paid by the day; provisions are rarely made in the event they are injured or killed in the line of work.)
Some photographers signed on for combat-zone training offered by former Special Air Service-types in Britain. A benefit of that training was it allowed them to qualify for specialized war-zone insurance at rates photographers could afford—Haviv remembers paying about $1,600 annually for coverage good in most countries.
He has since turned to insurance through Reporters Without Borders (http://en.rsf.org/), which starts at 1.4 Euros a day and increases depending on the country and the benefits desired: medical, evacuation, dismemberment, death.
Haviv believes the costs of such insurance should automatically be part of the conversation between editors and photographers, and added to the invoice like the costs of fixers and hotel rooms. In workshops he teaches for aspiring photojournalists, Haviv tells students: “You just have to make sure you are taking care of yourself in every way possible. You can’t really rely on a corporation, even though you are friends with the editor you are working with.”
How well that message gets out to photographers in the field is questionable. During the uprising in Tahrir Square and the intervention in Libya, for instance, the editor who asked not be quoted said he was flooded with e-mails like one he forwarded: “Dear [name of editor not even filled in], I will be in Libya from the 1st of April. I’ll be moving to the frontline from the East. If you have any interest, requests or ideas, feel free to let me know.”
He wonders how to respond: “Do I say, ‘Yes, I want to see your stuff! Fantastic! Exclusive material for us! And I don’t want to hear from you tomorrow—especially if you get hurt’?”
For a different model of how to handle the situation, American editors and photographers could look to European countries. Photographer Harald Henden covers armed conflicts for the Norwegian newspaper VG. Henden, reached on his way back into Libya, says the practice in Norway today was shaped by a 2008 attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul in which war correspondent Carsten Thomassen was injured.
“I found him a few minutes later and we basically worked very hard to keep him alive for like two hours before we were able to have him evacuated,” remembers Henden. Thomassen went into shock and died a short time later at a military hospital. Henden says that brought major changes to how Scandinavian publications handle war coverage.
“After this, no Norwegian publication sends someone to war zones without some kind of security and first-aid training,” he says. In addition, “anybody who goes into that kind of area for my newspaper [or others in the region] would be fully covered by a special war-zone insurance [paid for by the paper]. The editors take the responsibility of sending personnel into these kinds of areas much more seriously now,” and at VG, they normally refuse to send freelancers at all.
Henden and others like him have an additional safety net. In Norway and similar countries, if an injured photographer can just make it back to his or her home country, all medical expenses are covered by national healthcare.
Turning away work by freelancers—or at least uninsured free- lancers—might be too draconian a solution for the American market. But ending the general silence on the subject of “when things go sideways”—as one photographer termed it—might be possible.
Peter van Agtmael, a Magnum photographer who was beaten in Tahrir Square this year while on assignment for the Wall Street Journal, says he never discussed the possibility of anything like that with his editor before rushing to Egypt. “The subject, ‘Hey, in case something happens, where does your responsibility lie,’ it didn’t come up.” After he was attacked, the paper quickly said it would take care of getting him out of the country and any medical bills, he says. But van Agtmael added, “I should look at the contract itself.
“I’ve always thought of it as an implied social compact, but I really don’t know. I’ve been lax, and relying on the good will of large media conglomerates to take care of this.”
_____________________________________________________________
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
In light of some of the world events that have happened this year, an Arab Spring, a Tsunami and a Civil War; there has been a rush of photographers who have selflessly thrown themselves in to danger to report the story visually. Some of been badly injured. Some have died. But do all photographers who report on this kind of news actually know the risks involved and know what can happen to you if you get hurt in the line of work.
This article by Jay Malin is pretty revealing when it comes to just how expendable, and how vulnerable, photographers really are. I'm very found of photographers who can risk their own lives to report on dangerous stories, if it wasn't for them how would we ever know what things "look like" on the ground. But the risks, as we've learned this year, are absolute.
_____________________________________________________________
Copyright: PDN Magazine
ORIGINAL LINK
What To Expect If You’re Injured on Assignment
MAY 03, 2011
By Jay Mallin
[Editor's Note: This article was researched and written in March, weeks before the April 20 rocket attack in Misrata, Libya, which killed two photojournalists and also wounded two others. The injured were not on assignment. Thanks to help from many colleagues, the injured were evacuated and are now recovering; however, we believe the questions this article raises remain relevant.]
When Bangkok-based photographer Philip Blenkinsop returned home after having a bomb blow up a few feet in front of him while photographing in southern Thailand for Time Asia, he got a lesson in the sort of assistance and protection freelancers on assignment can expect from their clients.
“I had a lovely bouquet of flowers waiting for me when I got home,” remembers Blenkinsop. “And I was offered an extra day rate.”
To be fair, Blenkinsop, who had won recognition for his previous work for Time, says he did not ask his editors for any special consideration after the blast, and initial reports indicated his injuries were not serious. But the effects of the 2007 incident left him unable to work for about eight months. Of the flowers and the extra money, he says, “It felt a little like after carrying someone’s bags for 10 kilometers through the streets of Paris or New York, they’d tipped you a dollar, you know?”
With multiple wars, revolutions and a possible nuclear disaster, 2011 is shaping up as an unusually dangerous year for journalists. At least three photographers died in conflicts in the first three months of the year, while others suffered permanent injuries and hazards like kidnapping. Also on the minds of many is Joao Silva, recovering from a mine explosion that took both his legs in Afghanistan.
Incidents like Silva’s might be expected to spark discussions among photojournalists and their photo editors. Instead, many photographers and clients are treating the “what if’s” of a photographer injured or killed in the same way they always have— with silence.
“I don’t know how many years I’ve been working for different magazines [and] I’ve never seen anything in any contract that says anything about what happens if I get shot or killed or get my legs broken,” says Teru Kuwayama, who was injured in a car crash in Pakistan in 2009 that saw the driver killed and another photographer injured.
As for the clients, when contacted by PDN they were uniformly unwilling to talk. Editors and spokespeople either declined to speak for publication or were simply unreachable.
“We don’t discuss personnel matters,” said Daniel Kile, executive director of public relations for Time.
“They just don’t like me talking about it,” explained an editor at another publication.
At The New York Times, which has been praised for hiring long-time freelancer Silva as a staffer after he lost both his legs below the knees to a landmine, an editor was similarly reluctant to say anything.
Photographers themselves seem split between those who’ve never addressed the issue at all, and those who trust in a combination of passed-on lore (“use a platinum American Express card to qualify for free medevac”), half-remembered precedents (an anecdote that photojournalist Tim Page successfully sued Time magazine following his Vietnam-era brain injury), and faith in the compassion and camaraderie of their photo editors.
“[Photographers] assume—especially with publications that they have good relationships with—you make this assumption that they are going to take care of you if something happens,” says Ron Haviv, a photographer with VII Photo Agency who has covered conflicts around the world. “But I don’t think anyone knows in the end what will happen when you start getting people outside our circle involved, like lawyers and corporate people.”
Haviv has it right there, says one editor who was willing to discuss the subject, thanks to having moved on to a job in academia. Tom Kennedy, Alexia Foundation Chair Professor for Documentary Photography at Syracuse, has worked as director of photography for National Geographic and editor for Washingtonpost.com.
“I don’t know that there is an industry standard,” Kennedy says. “I think it’s very much company by company, and I think it is somewhat contingent obviously on what company practice is as dictated by lawyers.” Corporate lawyers may overrule photo editors who want to do what they can for colleagues.
“My experience is that the legal department and to some extent HR [human resources] tend to drive the contractual arrangements that an organization settles on,” Kennedy says. “Most organizations that I am familiar with that are working with freelancers regard them as independent contractors who are responsible for their own insurance, their own well-being.”
That was different at Geographic, he says, where contracts specified that the magazine did take on some of the risks. And conversations with photographers and editors who spoke off the record showed that in some cases, with some publications, magazines do take precautions like buying insurance for photographers being sent into unusually dangerous areas. But it’s often not discussed, and it’s not standard practice.
Veteran photojournalists say there has been an evolution in the industry’s approach to the problem since Operation Desert Storm in 1990. In the Nineties, the Balkan wars and Chechnya coincided with a decision by magazines to turn from assignments and day-rates to space guarantees. With a guarantee, a magazine pays the photographer a minimum fee (expenses are typically not included) in exchange for a first look at the photographers’ pictures. Many photographers believe the move from assignments to the more arm’s length guarantee arrangements made it easier for publications to cut loose freelancers in trouble.
That doesn’t mean they always were cut loose—photographers say there have been many cases where magazine publishing companies have helped photographers, even those who were not on assignment. At the same time, others on assignment found such assistance was not granted. (The local drivers and translators news organizations rely on in dangerous areas are typically paid by the day; provisions are rarely made in the event they are injured or killed in the line of work.)
Some photographers signed on for combat-zone training offered by former Special Air Service-types in Britain. A benefit of that training was it allowed them to qualify for specialized war-zone insurance at rates photographers could afford—Haviv remembers paying about $1,600 annually for coverage good in most countries.
He has since turned to insurance through Reporters Without Borders (http://en.rsf.org/), which starts at 1.4 Euros a day and increases depending on the country and the benefits desired: medical, evacuation, dismemberment, death.
Haviv believes the costs of such insurance should automatically be part of the conversation between editors and photographers, and added to the invoice like the costs of fixers and hotel rooms. In workshops he teaches for aspiring photojournalists, Haviv tells students: “You just have to make sure you are taking care of yourself in every way possible. You can’t really rely on a corporation, even though you are friends with the editor you are working with.”
How well that message gets out to photographers in the field is questionable. During the uprising in Tahrir Square and the intervention in Libya, for instance, the editor who asked not be quoted said he was flooded with e-mails like one he forwarded: “Dear [name of editor not even filled in], I will be in Libya from the 1st of April. I’ll be moving to the frontline from the East. If you have any interest, requests or ideas, feel free to let me know.”
He wonders how to respond: “Do I say, ‘Yes, I want to see your stuff! Fantastic! Exclusive material for us! And I don’t want to hear from you tomorrow—especially if you get hurt’?”
For a different model of how to handle the situation, American editors and photographers could look to European countries. Photographer Harald Henden covers armed conflicts for the Norwegian newspaper VG. Henden, reached on his way back into Libya, says the practice in Norway today was shaped by a 2008 attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul in which war correspondent Carsten Thomassen was injured.
“I found him a few minutes later and we basically worked very hard to keep him alive for like two hours before we were able to have him evacuated,” remembers Henden. Thomassen went into shock and died a short time later at a military hospital. Henden says that brought major changes to how Scandinavian publications handle war coverage.
“After this, no Norwegian publication sends someone to war zones without some kind of security and first-aid training,” he says. In addition, “anybody who goes into that kind of area for my newspaper [or others in the region] would be fully covered by a special war-zone insurance [paid for by the paper]. The editors take the responsibility of sending personnel into these kinds of areas much more seriously now,” and at VG, they normally refuse to send freelancers at all.
Henden and others like him have an additional safety net. In Norway and similar countries, if an injured photographer can just make it back to his or her home country, all medical expenses are covered by national healthcare.
Turning away work by freelancers—or at least uninsured free- lancers—might be too draconian a solution for the American market. But ending the general silence on the subject of “when things go sideways”—as one photographer termed it—might be possible.
Peter van Agtmael, a Magnum photographer who was beaten in Tahrir Square this year while on assignment for the Wall Street Journal, says he never discussed the possibility of anything like that with his editor before rushing to Egypt. “The subject, ‘Hey, in case something happens, where does your responsibility lie,’ it didn’t come up.” After he was attacked, the paper quickly said it would take care of getting him out of the country and any medical bills, he says. But van Agtmael added, “I should look at the contract itself.
“I’ve always thought of it as an implied social compact, but I really don’t know. I’ve been lax, and relying on the good will of large media conglomerates to take care of this.”
_____________________________________________________________
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, April 15, 2011
Ryan Pyle Blog: REMINDER - TONIGHT - MKRIDE @ UofT
Hello,
I just wanted to update all our MKRIDE Fans that I'll be speaking publicly, for the first time, about The Middle Kingdom Ride, that I completed with my brother Colin Pyle in late 2010. Our 65 day - 18,000km - motorcycle journey earned us both a place in the book of Guinness World Records for the most kilometers completed in a single country. A brief is below. Please be sure to RSVP at the following LINK.
Details:
The Middle Kingdom Ride
Brothers Colin and Ryan Pyle’s circumnavigation of China by motorcycle
Friday, April 15
6:30-8:30 pm
Innis Town Hall
2 Sussex Avenue
(at St. George, south of Bloor)
Join award-winning documentary photographer Ryan Pyle (University of Toronto graduate and AI Affiliate Member) for a discussion of his photography career, his motorcycle expedition, and the challenges of filmmaking. Samples of his photography and video clips from his motorcycle film will be included in the lecture.
An informal reception will follow.
An Asian Heritage Month Event | Register online at www.utoronto.ca/ai
_________________________________________
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Motorcycle Rider, Producer, Director, Photographer
Guinness World Record Holder
Film: The Middle Kingdom Ride
A 65 day - 18,000km - Motorcycle Adventure through China
www.mkride.com / ryan@mkride.com
**Charitable Partner** - SEVA FOUNDATION
**Corporate Sponsors** - The Middle Kingdom Ride could not have happened without our wonderful corporate sponsors:
BMW China, Touratech, The Tomson Group, Airhawk, Pelican Products, Kodak, Oakley,
Cardo Systems, Lowe Pro & Mandarin House.
You can follow The MKRIDE at:
@ YOUTUBE
@ http://twitter.com/#!/MK_Ride
Friday, April 08, 2011
Ryan Pyle Blog: MKRIDE Lecture @ University of Toronto
Hello,
I just wanted to update all our MKRIDE Fans that I'll be speaking publicly, for the first time, about The Middle Kingdom Ride, that I completed with my brother Colin Pyle in late 2010. Our 65 day - 18,000km - motorcycle journey earned us both a place in the book of Guinness World Records for the most kilometers completed in a single country. A brief is below. Please be sure to RSVP at the following LINK.
Details:
The Middle Kingdom Ride
Brothers Colin and Ryan Pyle’s circumnavigation of China by motorcycle
Friday, April 15
6:30-8:30 pm
Innis Town Hall
2 Sussex Avenue
(at St. George, south of Bloor)
Join award-winning documentary photographer Ryan Pyle (University of Toronto graduate and AI Affiliate Member) for a discussion of his photography career, his motorcycle expedition, and the challenges of filmmaking. Samples of his photography and video clips from his motorcycle film will be included in the lecture.
An informal reception will follow.
An Asian Heritage Month Event | Register online at www.utoronto.ca/ai
_________________________________________
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Motorcycle Rider, Producer, Director, Photographer
Guinness World Record Holder
Film: The Middle Kingdom Ride
A 65 day - 18,000km - Motorcycle Adventure through China
www.mkride.com / ryan@mkride.com
**Charitable Partner** - SEVA FOUNDATION
**Corporate Sponsors** - The Middle Kingdom Ride could not have happened without our wonderful corporate sponsors:
BMW China, Touratech, The Tomson Group, Airhawk, Pelican Products, Kodak, Oakley,
Cardo Systems, Lowe Pro & Mandarin House.
You can follow The MKRIDE at:
@ YOUTUBE
@ http://twitter.com/#!/MK_Ride
Friday, April 01, 2011
Ryan Pyle Blog: Where Did All The Features Go?
Hello.
In terms of breaking news consumption, the first quarter of 2011 has been intense.
We've had an Arab spring, a devastating earthquake in New Zealand and an double-catastrophe in Japan that as shocked us in to a realization of our fragile our existence is in this world.
And through all that we've had journalists running around dodging bullets, getting arrested, having their lives threatened and working within range of a major nuclear disaster. As one correspondent on CNN mentioned, we've had a years worth of international news coverage in the first 3 months of 2011. So, given that I write a blog about what's it is like being a photographer, and I am pretty self absorbed, my big question is: what does all this mean for people like me, the content producer?
Well, sadly it doesn't mean much. You see, I don't chase; I plot. In other words, I am not a breaking news man, I'm a features guy. I'm not very good at chasing the story, or documenting a breaking news story, or working in a war zone. I prefer to lay low, prepare and plot. I like to set traps and execute. The chaos involved in documenting breaking news is not an easy environment to work in; and I have great respect for the people who risk their lives to report in these situations; but I knew long ago that it wasn't for me.
While the crisis in Japan, New Zealand and the wider Middle East has contributed to some excellent news coverage and wonderful commitment by Newspapers and Magazines, it's been all breaking news all the time; and it's been an exhausting journey. So I have to ask: what happened to the feature story? What has happened to the well researched and well executed peace on a historical, business or cultural aspect of a geographical region or a people? There haven't been any, because there are already so few pages in newspapers and magazines and they have devoted, rightly so, much of their content to documenting the breaking news. I might also add here that there has been some stunning photography coming out the of the Middle East and Japan in the wake of these stories developing.
I was at a meeting with a few writers a couple of weeks ago and we were all joking about how impossible it is to pitch a feature story anymore, because there is so much pressure on the editors not to "overspend" that stories have to be basically a sure thing before anything can get "Green Lit"; and we joked about how boring that has become. One of the best parts about being a documentary photographer was the investigation aspect of the job, about not knowing what it would all look like until you got there, about trying to piece it all together for the folks in New York and London. Now everyone wants a storyboard of what the feature will look like when you don't exactly know what is happening on the ground, which is a huge problem when working in China specifically. Gone are the days of spending time, observing, plotting and executing; because that takes too much time and costs too much money for the newspapers and magazines of today. What's in fashion at the moment, and has been for several years now, is digital breaking news, print first and absorb later. Sure, some of this has worked, some hasn't; but the feature story has an important place in how we share information about what is happening in the world, and this information takes time to collect and it takes time to digest.
Breaking news is obviously crucial, but let's not lose track of the fact that the features stories still have an important role to play in this world of high-tech, speedy content creation.
Note: My blogs often allow me to try my hand at satire. Of course I feel deeply for the people of New Zealand, Japan and the folks striving for greater freedom in the Middle East; I've only used these examples to make a point that the "feature story" is getting lost in the mix of all the breaking news.
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
In terms of breaking news consumption, the first quarter of 2011 has been intense.
We've had an Arab spring, a devastating earthquake in New Zealand and an double-catastrophe in Japan that as shocked us in to a realization of our fragile our existence is in this world.
And through all that we've had journalists running around dodging bullets, getting arrested, having their lives threatened and working within range of a major nuclear disaster. As one correspondent on CNN mentioned, we've had a years worth of international news coverage in the first 3 months of 2011. So, given that I write a blog about what's it is like being a photographer, and I am pretty self absorbed, my big question is: what does all this mean for people like me, the content producer?
Well, sadly it doesn't mean much. You see, I don't chase; I plot. In other words, I am not a breaking news man, I'm a features guy. I'm not very good at chasing the story, or documenting a breaking news story, or working in a war zone. I prefer to lay low, prepare and plot. I like to set traps and execute. The chaos involved in documenting breaking news is not an easy environment to work in; and I have great respect for the people who risk their lives to report in these situations; but I knew long ago that it wasn't for me.
While the crisis in Japan, New Zealand and the wider Middle East has contributed to some excellent news coverage and wonderful commitment by Newspapers and Magazines, it's been all breaking news all the time; and it's been an exhausting journey. So I have to ask: what happened to the feature story? What has happened to the well researched and well executed peace on a historical, business or cultural aspect of a geographical region or a people? There haven't been any, because there are already so few pages in newspapers and magazines and they have devoted, rightly so, much of their content to documenting the breaking news. I might also add here that there has been some stunning photography coming out the of the Middle East and Japan in the wake of these stories developing.
I was at a meeting with a few writers a couple of weeks ago and we were all joking about how impossible it is to pitch a feature story anymore, because there is so much pressure on the editors not to "overspend" that stories have to be basically a sure thing before anything can get "Green Lit"; and we joked about how boring that has become. One of the best parts about being a documentary photographer was the investigation aspect of the job, about not knowing what it would all look like until you got there, about trying to piece it all together for the folks in New York and London. Now everyone wants a storyboard of what the feature will look like when you don't exactly know what is happening on the ground, which is a huge problem when working in China specifically. Gone are the days of spending time, observing, plotting and executing; because that takes too much time and costs too much money for the newspapers and magazines of today. What's in fashion at the moment, and has been for several years now, is digital breaking news, print first and absorb later. Sure, some of this has worked, some hasn't; but the feature story has an important place in how we share information about what is happening in the world, and this information takes time to collect and it takes time to digest.
Breaking news is obviously crucial, but let's not lose track of the fact that the features stories still have an important role to play in this world of high-tech, speedy content creation.
Note: My blogs often allow me to try my hand at satire. Of course I feel deeply for the people of New Zealand, Japan and the folks striving for greater freedom in the Middle East; I've only used these examples to make a point that the "feature story" is getting lost in the mix of all the breaking news.
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, March 25, 2011
Ryan Pyle Blog: Guinness World Records
Hello,
In a very round about way, today's blog posting is a "one of a kind". Many of you have followed along as my brother Colin and I rode our motorcycles around China during our 65 day - 18,000km - odyssey. While it was the hardest, and one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, it also appears that it was a first.
My brother and I became the first people to ride a motorcycle around China, and we also were awarded a Guinness World Record for the longest continuous motorcycle journey within a single country. It is a very surreal feeling to know that Colin and I are now Guinness World Record holders for endurance motorcycling. Our press release is below. Please "Like" us on our Facebook page and be sure to stay up to date on our film, DVD and book release.
Online Guinness Record: Follow this LINK.
Follow us on FACEBOOK.
Our Website: www.mkride.com
________________________________________________________
March 21th 2011
PRWEB Press Release
HEADLINE:
Canadian Brothers Set a World Record for their 18,000km Journey around China on BMW Motorcycles.
SUMMARY:
Canadian brothers Colin and Ryan Pyle are honored to receive an award by the Guinness World RecordsTM for their 18,000km odyssey around China on BMW F800GS motorcycles. Their journey will become a documentary film and book entitled The Middle Kingdom Ride.
QUOTE:
"It’s an honor to be recognized by the GWRTM for what was 65 of the most exhilarating, exhausting, and rewarding, days of my life. We have taken our BMW motorcycles through the toughest terrain in the world, and we’re alive to tell the story!” Ryan Pyle
BODY:
On March 09th 2011 Canadian brothers Colin and Ryan Pyle received a confirmation by the Guinness World RecordsTM that they had indeed set a World Record for their motorcycle journey around China. According to the Guinness World RecordsTM the name of the record they received was for the “Longest Journey by Motorcycle in a Single Country”.
Canadian brothers Colin and Ryan Pyle completed their epic motorcycle journey by returning back to Shanghai on Sunday October 17th 2010, after 65 days on the road circumnavigating China on their BMW F800GS motorcycles. Their journey was a unique one, as they have become the first riders to fully circumnavigate China by motorcycle in one single journey. During their remarkable 17,674km odyssey the brothers have encountered some of the most intense changes in culture, weather, altitude and terrain that exist in the world. They tackled heavy rains, flooding, landslides, freak hailstorms, extreme altitude (above 5000m/16,000ft), sand, gravel, thousands of kilometers of road construction and even bureaucratic / military interference.
Colin and Ryan intend to produce both a documentary film and a written book on their experiences in China, which have been far from regular. Anytime someone puts him or herself out there, into the wild, and opens themselves up to the experiences of such a vast and unique country one can’t help but encounter moments of danger, humor, sadness, gratification and personal gain and setback. Their journey will prove to be both colorful and dramatic, both intense and fulfilling.
Colin and Ryan Pyle are brothers from Toronto, Canada. But that’s about all they have in common. Ryan has spent the last decade in China building his career as a http://www.ryanpyle.com [Documentary Photographer]. Colin stayed closer to home, in Toronto, and built up, and sold, his own successful currency trading company. Together they plan to showcase much of China’s change and development from factory to farm. The general purpose of the trip is to put China on display. To explore the visual and cultural wonders that is China. With a massive population, crowded cities, abundant minorities and its stunning natural landscape; China offers a traveler an experience like no other. Colin and Ryan have titled their project, “The Middle Kingdom Ride”, as China’s historical name was once The Middle Kingdom.
Ryan and Colin will be raising money for the http://www.seva.org [SEVA Foundation] during their journey. SEVA, is a San Francisco based charity that has, for more than 30 years, been serving people around the world who are struggling for health, cultural survival and sustainable communities.
You can follow The Middle Kingdom Ride at http://www.mkride.com [MKRIDE.com], http://www.facebook.com/mkride [FACEBOOK], http://www.youtube.com/user/TheMKRIDE [YouTube] and http://twitter.com/MK_Ride [Twitter].
The Middle Kingdom Ride would have never happened without our amazing sponsors: http://www.mandarinhouse.cn [Mandarin House Language School], BMW China, Touratech, The Tomson Group, Airhawk, Pelican Products, Kodak, Oakley, Cardo Systems, and Lowe Pro.
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, March 18, 2011
Ryan Pyle Blog: Being Gay in China
Hello,
I read an article by Nicola Davison a few weeks back on what it was like to be gay in China, and I thought the article was revealing and interesting and well worth sharing. Please be sure that while China has it's own problems with gay people, so does much of the rest of Asia, notably Japan and Muslim Indonesia.
For what my opinion is worth, I really enjoyed this piece by Nicola. I like how she followed the stories of a few people and showed the lengths that people will go to in order to hide who they really are. A copy of the article is below, as is the original link.
__________________________________________________________________
Copyright: SLATE
Original Store: LINK
Title: Gay Marriage With Chinese Characteristics. A visit to a Shanghai fake-marriage market, where lesbians and gay men meet to find a husband or wife.
Written By: Nicola Davison
SHANGHAI, China—"I'm here to find a lesbian, to be with me and to build a home," No. 11 says to the crowd clustered on floor cushions at a sunlit yoga studio in Shanghai. No. 11 is a muscular man in a flannel shirt and cargo pants, and he easily commands the attention of the crowd of 40 or so young men and women who are gingerly sipping glasses of wine and whispering to their neighbors.
"In my view, a 30-year-old man should start thinking about having a family, but two men can't hold each other's hands in the street. We're not allowed to be a family," he says. The crowd nods.
I'm at a fake-marriage market, where Chinese lesbians and gay men meet to find a potential husband or wife. In China, the pressure to form a heterosexual marriage is so acute that 80 percent of China's gay population marries straight people, according to sexologist Li Yinhe, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. To avoid such unions, six months ago, Shanghai's biggest gay Web site, inlemon.cn, started to hold marriage markets once a month.
Thirty minutes earlier, I triple-checked the address scrawled in my notebook. The studio—located in a high-rise apartment complex—seems an unlikely spot for a fake-marriage market. "The boss of the yoga studio is very kind to us," says Fen Ye, my guide. Slipping off my shoes at the doorway, I pad up stairs lined with Buddhas in the red plastic flip-flops provided. When Fen slides open a door to reveal men and women chatting quietly, conversation falters. "They weren't expecting a foreigner," he whispers, adding, "and don't tell anyone you're a reporter. I'll just say you're my lesbian friend." He bustles me to a cushion on the floor and hands me a glass of Chinese red wine.
Precautions are necessary for an event like this. Though there are an estimated 30 million to 40 million gay people in China—there has been no official count—even simple actions such as trying to access Wikipedia's "LGBT" page often result in a "This webpage is not available" message. Chinese society has adopted a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. A 2007 survey by Li Yinhe found that 70 percent of Chinese people think homosexuality is either "a little" or "completely" wrong, and only 7.5 percent of respondents said they knew a gay person.
While past generations buried their sexuality in straight marriages, the people gathered at the yoga studio are trying a new approach. No. 8 (the men sport numbered buttons in a pleasing shade of blue, the women's are pink), a pretty 22-year-old woman with curly dyed chestnut hair, skinny jeans, and Snoopy slippers wants a fake marriage to ease parental pressure, but she doesn't want a baby. No. 15, a strikingly tall man with side-swept bangs, says: "I want to get married for my parents, but I think lying to them will make me feel terrible. So I want to have a fake marriage with a lesbian girl, but just for one or two years, and then I want a divorce to show my parents that I am not a marriage type." There's one constant: All the participants talk about pleasing their parents.
Influential Zhou Dynasty Confucian scholar Mencius said that the "most serious" way to be unfilial is to not produce an heir. It's an idea that still reverberates through China's family-centric culture. In contemporary slang, single women over the age of 27 are known as sheng nu or "leftovers."
"I could absolutely not come out to my parents. If I could tell them I was gay, I wouldn't have needed to get married," says my guide, 30-year-old Fen, as we sit in a converted Shanghainese shikumen lane house near the popular tourist spot People's Park. We're talking about his lesbian wife, whom he met on inlemon.cn.
"I had a big, traditional Chinese wedding. It lasted for three days, and there were maybe 500 people there. My parents were so happy," says Fen, who knew his wife for seven months before they married. "In your job, in your social life, and for family gatherings, you need to bring a partner. It's hard to do these things alone in China. My grandfather and grandmother … everyone was waiting for me to get married. The wedding felt like a task I needed to accomplish, something I needed to get through step-by-step, a bit like doing homework."
For many gay men, the chance to experience parenthood—and to provide a grandchild for longing parents—is a distinct advantage of these unions. At the yoga studio marriage market, almost every man says he wants a baby, Fen included. "[On the Web site] I said that I didn't want to have a sex life with my wife—absolutely none." Although he says he and his wife are not "very good friends," they have discussed having a child. "For a baby we will maybe use artificial insemination," he says.
Past generations did things differently. The Lai Lai dancehall, in a rundown corner of Shanghai's Hongkou district, is a refuge for gay but married men. Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night, about 200 men crowd the dance floor in their mismatched suits, twirling together in the green light and cigarette smoke. When they're not dancing, they sit in groups around the edge, nursing flasks of tea, though beer is available for 75 cents a glass.
Zhang, who is 55 and married with children, goes every week. "You can find gay bars in every city, but a dancehall like this only in Shanghai," he says. While tinny speakers rattle out familiar patriotic songs, the dancing stays elegant and refined. Flirting is discreet, barely noticeable. "Older gay men feel comfortable in this place," Zhang tells me. "Because the dancehall starts early, they can go home to their families and keep it secret. Though sometimes the wives come to look for their husbands, and then other people have to persuade them that their husband is just dancing."
But 30-year-old Mu Mu knew that her husband was not "just dancing." Just after she became pregnant, Mu Mu's husband started openly dating men. "I knew he was gay before we got married," says the Shanghai resident over the phone to protect her anonymity. "But the word gay was really strange to me. I read that being gay is something you're born as, but other people said it's like a disease that can be healed. Because I loved him a lot, I hoped that maybe he would change." It wasn't until a year after the birth of their daughter, and after her husband brought home another man to live with them, that Mu Mu left him.
Mu Mu is one of China's estimated 16 million to 25 million "homowives"—or tongqi in pinyin (the word is an amalgamation of the Mandarin for gay and wife)—women who are married to gay men.
"The happiest time of our marriage was when I gave birth to our daughter," says Mu Mu. "That one week when I was in the hospital, he took care of me and the baby. Much of the rest of the time I felt abandoned."
For many women, speaking out about their gay husbands is more difficult than staying in loveless marriages, but in the last few years Web-based support groups have started to form. Li, 33, is a volunteer on a homowife support forum on QQ, a Chinese social networking site. Her job involves giving advice and answering questions, and she is often the only person the homowives confide in. "The women are desperate," she explains over iced tea on a busy shopping street in central Shanghai. "At first they feel shock, and they don't know what to do, because people don't know much about gay people. They think their husband is a disturbed person."
While it's relatively easy to get divorced in China, Li says, many women stick with the marriages for complicated reasons. "Some stay because they still love their husband. He's a good person, and a good father, and they want their children to have a father," she says. Another reason is social stigma. "Most of the women can't go to their friends, they don't think they will be able to accept it or understand. Which is true. I think in China people make a moral judgment about it. [The women] think people will think, 'Wow, your husband would prefer to be with a man than with you—what a loser.' "
But there are tentative signs of change. Pink Space, a Beijing-based sexuality research center, started a support group for homowives earlier this year—the first of its kind in China. Zhang Beichan, a director at the China Sexology Association, thinks the homowife "problem" is shrinking. "In 2005, a TV station put out a program about gay issues, and I introduced a homowife who talked about her problems. This was one of the first times this issue was introduced to the public. It had a very big impact—some gay men still share that program with their families when they are pressured into getting married. Also, there are more and more gay men coming out of the closet, and more awareness of gay issues."
Back at the fake-marriage market, Fen Yu and his friends see themselves as the "transitional" generation. While they can't come out to their parents, they can, at least, be open about their sexuality among friends, go to gay bars, and date. "For the generation after ours, it might be easier," he says, "Our parents have no idea what homosexuality is. It's very difficult, because it's just opening up."
If Fen becomes a father, his will be a different approach: "I might not be able to tell my parents," he says, "but when my child grows up, I will tell them the real story about why it happened and who I am."
__________________________________________________________________
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
I read an article by Nicola Davison a few weeks back on what it was like to be gay in China, and I thought the article was revealing and interesting and well worth sharing. Please be sure that while China has it's own problems with gay people, so does much of the rest of Asia, notably Japan and Muslim Indonesia.
For what my opinion is worth, I really enjoyed this piece by Nicola. I like how she followed the stories of a few people and showed the lengths that people will go to in order to hide who they really are. A copy of the article is below, as is the original link.
__________________________________________________________________
Copyright: SLATE
Original Store: LINK
Title: Gay Marriage With Chinese Characteristics. A visit to a Shanghai fake-marriage market, where lesbians and gay men meet to find a husband or wife.
Written By: Nicola Davison
SHANGHAI, China—"I'm here to find a lesbian, to be with me and to build a home," No. 11 says to the crowd clustered on floor cushions at a sunlit yoga studio in Shanghai. No. 11 is a muscular man in a flannel shirt and cargo pants, and he easily commands the attention of the crowd of 40 or so young men and women who are gingerly sipping glasses of wine and whispering to their neighbors.
"In my view, a 30-year-old man should start thinking about having a family, but two men can't hold each other's hands in the street. We're not allowed to be a family," he says. The crowd nods.
I'm at a fake-marriage market, where Chinese lesbians and gay men meet to find a potential husband or wife. In China, the pressure to form a heterosexual marriage is so acute that 80 percent of China's gay population marries straight people, according to sexologist Li Yinhe, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. To avoid such unions, six months ago, Shanghai's biggest gay Web site, inlemon.cn, started to hold marriage markets once a month.
Thirty minutes earlier, I triple-checked the address scrawled in my notebook. The studio—located in a high-rise apartment complex—seems an unlikely spot for a fake-marriage market. "The boss of the yoga studio is very kind to us," says Fen Ye, my guide. Slipping off my shoes at the doorway, I pad up stairs lined with Buddhas in the red plastic flip-flops provided. When Fen slides open a door to reveal men and women chatting quietly, conversation falters. "They weren't expecting a foreigner," he whispers, adding, "and don't tell anyone you're a reporter. I'll just say you're my lesbian friend." He bustles me to a cushion on the floor and hands me a glass of Chinese red wine.
Precautions are necessary for an event like this. Though there are an estimated 30 million to 40 million gay people in China—there has been no official count—even simple actions such as trying to access Wikipedia's "LGBT" page often result in a "This webpage is not available" message. Chinese society has adopted a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. A 2007 survey by Li Yinhe found that 70 percent of Chinese people think homosexuality is either "a little" or "completely" wrong, and only 7.5 percent of respondents said they knew a gay person.
While past generations buried their sexuality in straight marriages, the people gathered at the yoga studio are trying a new approach. No. 8 (the men sport numbered buttons in a pleasing shade of blue, the women's are pink), a pretty 22-year-old woman with curly dyed chestnut hair, skinny jeans, and Snoopy slippers wants a fake marriage to ease parental pressure, but she doesn't want a baby. No. 15, a strikingly tall man with side-swept bangs, says: "I want to get married for my parents, but I think lying to them will make me feel terrible. So I want to have a fake marriage with a lesbian girl, but just for one or two years, and then I want a divorce to show my parents that I am not a marriage type." There's one constant: All the participants talk about pleasing their parents.
Influential Zhou Dynasty Confucian scholar Mencius said that the "most serious" way to be unfilial is to not produce an heir. It's an idea that still reverberates through China's family-centric culture. In contemporary slang, single women over the age of 27 are known as sheng nu or "leftovers."
"I could absolutely not come out to my parents. If I could tell them I was gay, I wouldn't have needed to get married," says my guide, 30-year-old Fen, as we sit in a converted Shanghainese shikumen lane house near the popular tourist spot People's Park. We're talking about his lesbian wife, whom he met on inlemon.cn.
"I had a big, traditional Chinese wedding. It lasted for three days, and there were maybe 500 people there. My parents were so happy," says Fen, who knew his wife for seven months before they married. "In your job, in your social life, and for family gatherings, you need to bring a partner. It's hard to do these things alone in China. My grandfather and grandmother … everyone was waiting for me to get married. The wedding felt like a task I needed to accomplish, something I needed to get through step-by-step, a bit like doing homework."
For many gay men, the chance to experience parenthood—and to provide a grandchild for longing parents—is a distinct advantage of these unions. At the yoga studio marriage market, almost every man says he wants a baby, Fen included. "[On the Web site] I said that I didn't want to have a sex life with my wife—absolutely none." Although he says he and his wife are not "very good friends," they have discussed having a child. "For a baby we will maybe use artificial insemination," he says.
Past generations did things differently. The Lai Lai dancehall, in a rundown corner of Shanghai's Hongkou district, is a refuge for gay but married men. Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night, about 200 men crowd the dance floor in their mismatched suits, twirling together in the green light and cigarette smoke. When they're not dancing, they sit in groups around the edge, nursing flasks of tea, though beer is available for 75 cents a glass.
Zhang, who is 55 and married with children, goes every week. "You can find gay bars in every city, but a dancehall like this only in Shanghai," he says. While tinny speakers rattle out familiar patriotic songs, the dancing stays elegant and refined. Flirting is discreet, barely noticeable. "Older gay men feel comfortable in this place," Zhang tells me. "Because the dancehall starts early, they can go home to their families and keep it secret. Though sometimes the wives come to look for their husbands, and then other people have to persuade them that their husband is just dancing."
But 30-year-old Mu Mu knew that her husband was not "just dancing." Just after she became pregnant, Mu Mu's husband started openly dating men. "I knew he was gay before we got married," says the Shanghai resident over the phone to protect her anonymity. "But the word gay was really strange to me. I read that being gay is something you're born as, but other people said it's like a disease that can be healed. Because I loved him a lot, I hoped that maybe he would change." It wasn't until a year after the birth of their daughter, and after her husband brought home another man to live with them, that Mu Mu left him.
Mu Mu is one of China's estimated 16 million to 25 million "homowives"—or tongqi in pinyin (the word is an amalgamation of the Mandarin for gay and wife)—women who are married to gay men.
"The happiest time of our marriage was when I gave birth to our daughter," says Mu Mu. "That one week when I was in the hospital, he took care of me and the baby. Much of the rest of the time I felt abandoned."
For many women, speaking out about their gay husbands is more difficult than staying in loveless marriages, but in the last few years Web-based support groups have started to form. Li, 33, is a volunteer on a homowife support forum on QQ, a Chinese social networking site. Her job involves giving advice and answering questions, and she is often the only person the homowives confide in. "The women are desperate," she explains over iced tea on a busy shopping street in central Shanghai. "At first they feel shock, and they don't know what to do, because people don't know much about gay people. They think their husband is a disturbed person."
While it's relatively easy to get divorced in China, Li says, many women stick with the marriages for complicated reasons. "Some stay because they still love their husband. He's a good person, and a good father, and they want their children to have a father," she says. Another reason is social stigma. "Most of the women can't go to their friends, they don't think they will be able to accept it or understand. Which is true. I think in China people make a moral judgment about it. [The women] think people will think, 'Wow, your husband would prefer to be with a man than with you—what a loser.' "
But there are tentative signs of change. Pink Space, a Beijing-based sexuality research center, started a support group for homowives earlier this year—the first of its kind in China. Zhang Beichan, a director at the China Sexology Association, thinks the homowife "problem" is shrinking. "In 2005, a TV station put out a program about gay issues, and I introduced a homowife who talked about her problems. This was one of the first times this issue was introduced to the public. It had a very big impact—some gay men still share that program with their families when they are pressured into getting married. Also, there are more and more gay men coming out of the closet, and more awareness of gay issues."
Back at the fake-marriage market, Fen Yu and his friends see themselves as the "transitional" generation. While they can't come out to their parents, they can, at least, be open about their sexuality among friends, go to gay bars, and date. "For the generation after ours, it might be easier," he says, "Our parents have no idea what homosexuality is. It's very difficult, because it's just opening up."
If Fen becomes a father, his will be a different approach: "I might not be able to tell my parents," he says, "but when my child grows up, I will tell them the real story about why it happened and who I am."
__________________________________________________________________
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, March 04, 2011
Ryan Pyle Blog: New Work: The Butter Lamp Festival
Hello,
I've recently completed some work that I thought be of interest to my blog followers.
I traveled to the Ganden Monastery, located in Central Tibet, during winter to photograph the Butter Lamp festival. The reason for visiting was that years ago, on a previous assignment, a local once told me that she had always wished to celebrate the Butter Lamp festival at the Ganden Monastery because of the special Thanka (large carpet with painted Buddha) that is unveiled during that celebration. I marked it down on a my list as something that I was keen to photograph. And so I was finally able to make the trip, and it was an amazing visual experience at over 16,000 feet; I spent most of the next two days in bed with altitude sickness after shooting the festival. Details are below.
What is the Butter Lamp Festival?
The Tibet Butter Lamp Festival is celebrated on the final day of the Great Prayer Festival The event was also established way back in 1409 by Tsong Khapa to celebrate the victory of Sakyamuni against heretics in a religious debate. At that time he commissioned monks to make flowers and trees with colored butter. This tradition has been maintained to this day. In the past, various giant butter and butter sculptures, in forms of auspicious symbols and figures, were displayed on Barkhor Street in Lhasa. But today things are toned down an the festival is centered around the display of thousands of small hand held butter lamps.
What is the Ganden Monastery?
The Ganden Monastery was the original monastery in the Geluk order, founded by Je Tsongkhapa himself in 1409, and traditionally considered to be the seat of Geluk administrative and political power. Being the farthest from Lhasa of the three university monasteries, Ganden traditionally had a smaller population with some 6,000 monks in the early 20th century. Ganden Monastery consisted of two principal original colleges, Jangtse and Shartse, meaning North Peak and East Peak respectively. Ganden Monastery contained more than two dozen major chapels with large Buddha statues. The largest chapel was capable of seating 3,500 monks.
Below is an edit of the photography completed at the Ganden Monastery, part of the Yellow Hat Sect of Tibetan Buddhism.
LINK: http://archive.ryanpyle.com/gallery/Tibet-Butter-Lamp-Festival/G0000l.8PTU5UslU
My Favorite Images: LINK#1 & LINK #2
For anyone interested, the work was shot on two Lecia M6's. One had a 50mm f/1.4 and the other had a 28mm f/2.0. The work was shot on Kodak Color 100 VS film.
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, January 28, 2011
Ryan Pyle Blog: China is Funding Terrorism
Hello.
On December 20th 2010, the Shangdi Guanqun Investment Company signed a letter of intent to invest up to USD 2 Billion in to an port and industrial zone in the Northeast of North Korea. A similar investment was tried in the 1990s but didn't amount to much, but apparently this time around the deal was cemented during a visit by Wen Jiabao in 2009. Upwards and onwards.
So what does this mean? Well, apparently we live in a world where you (a pudgy dictator) can shell a democratic country, kill 40+ civilians and then be rewarded with a USD 2 Billion in investments from an emerging superpower, who is also the world's second largest economy. In other words, it means we live in a pretty sick time; an era of distaste and disbelief.
Make no bones about it, this money being invested will go nowhere. The port and industrial center will not develop and the money will be siphoned off or disappear. It will not help ordinary people in North Korea and will only create jobs that support either the military or the government directly. The Shangdi Guanqun Investment Company is a state-run company that specializes in natural resources and infrastructure development. Ownership, or should I say beneficiaries, of the company is opaque at best.
To me, a China watcher and long time resident of Shanghai, I would have to say that this deal simply amounts to state sponsored terrorism. Strong words, but what more can we believe. Basically a Chinese Government controlled entity is using cheap loans from a Government controlled bank to invest USD 2 Billion in a rouge state that holds most of Asia hostage with nuclear tipped missiles. If something sounds amiss, it's because it is. None of this adds up and it shows the true weaknesses of China: that leadership is fractured and it leaves one asking who is really in charge. Obvious Hu Jintao, while dining with President Obama, wouldn't have green-lit this investment to be announced during his state visit to the USA. Those who did make the deal public clearly wanted to damage Hu Jintao's reputation.
There are a lot of factions in China, all bumping in to each other in an attempt to carve out their own power centers. The political leadership is just one of those factions; the military is another. Former leaders, and their children, who run massive conglomerates and/or investment companies and LBO firms are another. As China becomes more powerful and more foreign investment enters the country having all these powers pushing for power, without a strict rule of law to govern them, will create chaos.
In the US the State governments push the Federal government, the Congress pushes the White House, the Supreme Courts keeps everyone in check. There are power centers and power does shift but there is a Rule of Law that keeps it all in check; and there is a free press that points out when one faction becomes too powerful. In China none of that exists. Some might say that is an advantage to getting things done quickly. That's true, and positive, when it comes to building infrastructure and things like low-income housing; but its clearly negative when it comes to propping up the North Korean regime with a USD 2 Billion investment.
China needs to decide which team it wants to play for: The one that sponsors terrorism or the one that doesn't. An article by the WSJ is below.
___________________________________________________________________
The Wall Street Journal
Date: January 19 2011
Copyright: The Wall Street Journal
Original Link: Article
By: JAY SOLOMON And JEREMY PAGE
A Chinese firm has signed a letter of intent to invest $2 billion in a North Korean industrial zone, representing one of the largest potential investments in Kim Jong Il's authoritarian state and a challenge to U.S. policy in the region.
The agreement was signed with little fanfare in Pyongyang on Dec. 20—a day otherwise marked by pitched tension on the Korean peninsula following the North's shelling of a South Korean island—according to documents viewed by the Wall Street Journal. Confirmation of the deal comes as Chinese President Hu Jintao visits Washington this week in a bid to forge closer security and economic ties with the U.S.
U.S. officials said the administration is aware of the possible Chinese investment, but noted that previous projects haven't gone anywhere. "No investment project will enable North Korea to meet the needs of its people as long as its government continues its destabilizing behavior," said a senior administration official.
The letter of intent involves China's Shangdi Guanqun Investment Co. and North Korea's Investment and Development Group. An assistant to the managing director of Shangdi Guanqun, who identified himself only by his surname, Han, said his company's planned investment is focused on the Rason special economic zone, situated near North Korea's border with Russia.
The zone was called Rajin-Sonbong when it was established in 1991, but failed to attract sufficient investment. It was revived, and re-named Rason, following a visit there in 2009 by Mr. Kim.
Mr. Han said the plan is to develop infrastructure, including docks, a power plant and roads over the next two to three years, followed by various industrial projects, including an oil refinery, over the next five to 10 years. He said the company was waiting for a response from the North Korean government before applying for approval from China's Ministry of Commerce.
"It's all pending at this stage, and it's really up to the Korean side to make the decision," Mr. Han said. He added that the $2 billion figure was what the North Korean side had hoped for, not necessarily what his company could deliver.
Associated Press
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il endorsing a bottle
The company's Web site says the company was "under the administration" of a state-owned enterprise, Shangdi Purchase-Estate Corporation. Mr. Han, however, said his company was "100 percent private."
For the Obama administration, securing China's cooperation in restraining North Korea's military and nuclear-proliferation activities is a cornerstone of a warmer bilateral relationship. But the potential investment is a reminder of possible limits of Chinese cooperation.
The U.S. wants to step up sanctions to force Kim Jong Il to give up his nuclear-weapons arsenal and military activities. China, meanwhile, is increasingly promoting business projects and direct investment to influence the North, say Chinese and American analysts, arguing financial pressure hasn't worked.
China is North Korea's biggest trading partner and aid donor, but the scale of this deal raises concerns in Seoul that Beijing is running its own version of the "Sunshine" policy under which the South boosted investment in the North from 1998 to 2008.
This policy disconnect is expected to be one of the issues Chinese and U.S. officials discuss this week. "These types of deals pursued by China generally present a real challenge to the sanctions" being effective, said Victor Cha, a North Korea expert who helped oversee Asia policy in George W. Bush's National Security Council. "The net effect is that it does make it more difficult for these sanctions to have the desired effect."
Such deals have emerged in the past and have come to nothing, analysts said, and it is possible this one, too, could peter out. A number of similar North Korean economic zones have failed to live up to their billing because of poor infrastructure and corruption, and a lack of economic reform. News of the deal was first reported in the Korean-language press, including the Voice of America's Korean service.
It is unclear how long the agreement has been in the works. But its Dec. 20 signing came on the day South Korea conducted a closely watched artillery test from Yeonpyeong Island near North Korea.
The test marked a high point in tensions after North Korea's surprise late November shelling of Yeonpyeong, which killed four South Koreans. Pyongyang had threatened a swift military response should Seoul carry out an announced artillery test on Dec. 20. But the day's drill came and went amid high security in the South, with the North saying in a statement it "did not feel any need to retaliate."
Top administration officials have recently both praised and chided the Chinese over the North. On a trip to China last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates commended the Chinese for their "constructive" role in reducing tensions on the peninsula after Pyongyang's recent shelling of a South Korean island. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a Friday speech pressed China to be more aggressive in helping tamp down the North's nuclear program.
The proposed investment is among the strongest evidence yet of China's strategy of using direct investment rather political pressure to push for change in North Korea. Chinese experts say that after North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006, China tried to make improved bilateral relations dependent on Pyongyang dismantling its nuclear program. But after a second test in 2009, China changed tack.
Beijing now believes, according to Chinese experts, that the North Korean regime won't respond to political pressure and could collapse completely if China cuts off aid and investment, triggering a flood of refugees into northeastern China, and bringing U.S. troops right up to the Chinese border.
The investment strategy was cemented when China's Premier Wen Jiabao visited North Korea in October 2009 and signed a slew of economic and trade agreements. One of those agreements was for China to fund construction of a $250 million bridge across the Yalu River that separates the two countries.
Construction of the bridge, which would link China with another North Korean special economic zone, had been slated to start in August. Local officials said in November it appeared to have been put on hold indefinitely. Now they say a ground-breaking ceremony was held Dec. 31.
U.S. officials are particularly concerned about how China's financial links to North Korea may be facilitating Pyongyang's weapons programs. In November, Pyongyang showed a visiting American scientist 2,000 centrifuges stationed at a cover site, drastically raising fears about the North's ability to expand its nuclear-weapons arsenal.
"China's increased economic support undercuts the rest of the region's efforts to convince Pyongyang that there will be consequences for further belligerence, nuclear weapons development or transfer of nuclear capabilities," said Michael Green, who also served as a senior official on Asia during the Bush administration.
___________________________________________________________________
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
On December 20th 2010, the Shangdi Guanqun Investment Company signed a letter of intent to invest up to USD 2 Billion in to an port and industrial zone in the Northeast of North Korea. A similar investment was tried in the 1990s but didn't amount to much, but apparently this time around the deal was cemented during a visit by Wen Jiabao in 2009. Upwards and onwards.
So what does this mean? Well, apparently we live in a world where you (a pudgy dictator) can shell a democratic country, kill 40+ civilians and then be rewarded with a USD 2 Billion in investments from an emerging superpower, who is also the world's second largest economy. In other words, it means we live in a pretty sick time; an era of distaste and disbelief.
Make no bones about it, this money being invested will go nowhere. The port and industrial center will not develop and the money will be siphoned off or disappear. It will not help ordinary people in North Korea and will only create jobs that support either the military or the government directly. The Shangdi Guanqun Investment Company is a state-run company that specializes in natural resources and infrastructure development. Ownership, or should I say beneficiaries, of the company is opaque at best.
To me, a China watcher and long time resident of Shanghai, I would have to say that this deal simply amounts to state sponsored terrorism. Strong words, but what more can we believe. Basically a Chinese Government controlled entity is using cheap loans from a Government controlled bank to invest USD 2 Billion in a rouge state that holds most of Asia hostage with nuclear tipped missiles. If something sounds amiss, it's because it is. None of this adds up and it shows the true weaknesses of China: that leadership is fractured and it leaves one asking who is really in charge. Obvious Hu Jintao, while dining with President Obama, wouldn't have green-lit this investment to be announced during his state visit to the USA. Those who did make the deal public clearly wanted to damage Hu Jintao's reputation.
There are a lot of factions in China, all bumping in to each other in an attempt to carve out their own power centers. The political leadership is just one of those factions; the military is another. Former leaders, and their children, who run massive conglomerates and/or investment companies and LBO firms are another. As China becomes more powerful and more foreign investment enters the country having all these powers pushing for power, without a strict rule of law to govern them, will create chaos.
In the US the State governments push the Federal government, the Congress pushes the White House, the Supreme Courts keeps everyone in check. There are power centers and power does shift but there is a Rule of Law that keeps it all in check; and there is a free press that points out when one faction becomes too powerful. In China none of that exists. Some might say that is an advantage to getting things done quickly. That's true, and positive, when it comes to building infrastructure and things like low-income housing; but its clearly negative when it comes to propping up the North Korean regime with a USD 2 Billion investment.
China needs to decide which team it wants to play for: The one that sponsors terrorism or the one that doesn't. An article by the WSJ is below.
___________________________________________________________________
The Wall Street Journal
Date: January 19 2011
Copyright: The Wall Street Journal
Original Link: Article
By: JAY SOLOMON And JEREMY PAGE
A Chinese firm has signed a letter of intent to invest $2 billion in a North Korean industrial zone, representing one of the largest potential investments in Kim Jong Il's authoritarian state and a challenge to U.S. policy in the region.
The agreement was signed with little fanfare in Pyongyang on Dec. 20—a day otherwise marked by pitched tension on the Korean peninsula following the North's shelling of a South Korean island—according to documents viewed by the Wall Street Journal. Confirmation of the deal comes as Chinese President Hu Jintao visits Washington this week in a bid to forge closer security and economic ties with the U.S.
U.S. officials said the administration is aware of the possible Chinese investment, but noted that previous projects haven't gone anywhere. "No investment project will enable North Korea to meet the needs of its people as long as its government continues its destabilizing behavior," said a senior administration official.
The letter of intent involves China's Shangdi Guanqun Investment Co. and North Korea's Investment and Development Group. An assistant to the managing director of Shangdi Guanqun, who identified himself only by his surname, Han, said his company's planned investment is focused on the Rason special economic zone, situated near North Korea's border with Russia.
The zone was called Rajin-Sonbong when it was established in 1991, but failed to attract sufficient investment. It was revived, and re-named Rason, following a visit there in 2009 by Mr. Kim.
Mr. Han said the plan is to develop infrastructure, including docks, a power plant and roads over the next two to three years, followed by various industrial projects, including an oil refinery, over the next five to 10 years. He said the company was waiting for a response from the North Korean government before applying for approval from China's Ministry of Commerce.
"It's all pending at this stage, and it's really up to the Korean side to make the decision," Mr. Han said. He added that the $2 billion figure was what the North Korean side had hoped for, not necessarily what his company could deliver.
Associated Press
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il endorsing a bottle
The company's Web site says the company was "under the administration" of a state-owned enterprise, Shangdi Purchase-Estate Corporation. Mr. Han, however, said his company was "100 percent private."
For the Obama administration, securing China's cooperation in restraining North Korea's military and nuclear-proliferation activities is a cornerstone of a warmer bilateral relationship. But the potential investment is a reminder of possible limits of Chinese cooperation.
The U.S. wants to step up sanctions to force Kim Jong Il to give up his nuclear-weapons arsenal and military activities. China, meanwhile, is increasingly promoting business projects and direct investment to influence the North, say Chinese and American analysts, arguing financial pressure hasn't worked.
China is North Korea's biggest trading partner and aid donor, but the scale of this deal raises concerns in Seoul that Beijing is running its own version of the "Sunshine" policy under which the South boosted investment in the North from 1998 to 2008.
This policy disconnect is expected to be one of the issues Chinese and U.S. officials discuss this week. "These types of deals pursued by China generally present a real challenge to the sanctions" being effective, said Victor Cha, a North Korea expert who helped oversee Asia policy in George W. Bush's National Security Council. "The net effect is that it does make it more difficult for these sanctions to have the desired effect."
Such deals have emerged in the past and have come to nothing, analysts said, and it is possible this one, too, could peter out. A number of similar North Korean economic zones have failed to live up to their billing because of poor infrastructure and corruption, and a lack of economic reform. News of the deal was first reported in the Korean-language press, including the Voice of America's Korean service.
It is unclear how long the agreement has been in the works. But its Dec. 20 signing came on the day South Korea conducted a closely watched artillery test from Yeonpyeong Island near North Korea.
The test marked a high point in tensions after North Korea's surprise late November shelling of Yeonpyeong, which killed four South Koreans. Pyongyang had threatened a swift military response should Seoul carry out an announced artillery test on Dec. 20. But the day's drill came and went amid high security in the South, with the North saying in a statement it "did not feel any need to retaliate."
Top administration officials have recently both praised and chided the Chinese over the North. On a trip to China last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates commended the Chinese for their "constructive" role in reducing tensions on the peninsula after Pyongyang's recent shelling of a South Korean island. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a Friday speech pressed China to be more aggressive in helping tamp down the North's nuclear program.
The proposed investment is among the strongest evidence yet of China's strategy of using direct investment rather political pressure to push for change in North Korea. Chinese experts say that after North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006, China tried to make improved bilateral relations dependent on Pyongyang dismantling its nuclear program. But after a second test in 2009, China changed tack.
Beijing now believes, according to Chinese experts, that the North Korean regime won't respond to political pressure and could collapse completely if China cuts off aid and investment, triggering a flood of refugees into northeastern China, and bringing U.S. troops right up to the Chinese border.
The investment strategy was cemented when China's Premier Wen Jiabao visited North Korea in October 2009 and signed a slew of economic and trade agreements. One of those agreements was for China to fund construction of a $250 million bridge across the Yalu River that separates the two countries.
Construction of the bridge, which would link China with another North Korean special economic zone, had been slated to start in August. Local officials said in November it appeared to have been put on hold indefinitely. Now they say a ground-breaking ceremony was held Dec. 31.
U.S. officials are particularly concerned about how China's financial links to North Korea may be facilitating Pyongyang's weapons programs. In November, Pyongyang showed a visiting American scientist 2,000 centrifuges stationed at a cover site, drastically raising fears about the North's ability to expand its nuclear-weapons arsenal.
"China's increased economic support undercuts the rest of the region's efforts to convince Pyongyang that there will be consequences for further belligerence, nuclear weapons development or transfer of nuclear capabilities," said Michael Green, who also served as a senior official on Asia during the Bush administration.
___________________________________________________________________
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, January 14, 2011
Ryan Pyle Blog: The NPAC Photo Essay
Hello.
I recently had some work featured on the National Photographers Association of (NPAC) Canada's website. To be brutally honest I don't know too much about the NPAC. I knew there was an association, much like the American version; but I had never been in touch with them.
Having lived in China for a decade and spending my entire professional career abroad I never found much use in photography associations; but I can acknowledge that they seem to be very worthwhile for a lot of photographers based domestically, and they seem to offer a lot of legal advice and small business advice which I think is really important.
A link to the photo essay is below. The text that accompanies the work is below as well. I was in a particularly gloomy mood when I was writing this. Watch out for the double dip.
NPAC Website LINK
_______________________________________
As we begin 2011 the world is finally showing some signs of economic recovery. Although there is a sovereign debt crisis in Europe and the United States continues to struggle with high unemployment, companies are making money again and banks are behaving more responsibly. As we all look forward to better and brighter times, it’s important that we learn lessons from the behavior that almost caused the end of the financial world as we know it. Not only are banks to blame but we, much of the general public, simply over-consume and spend beyond our means. Do our actions have consequences? The straight answer is yes; especially in places we would never assume.
In October 2008 when Lehman Brothers, the US Investment Bank, went bankrupt the shock-waves were felt around the world. Banks lined up for government hand outs, the public panicked and we all stopped spending. As a result retailers shuttered and global trade came to a screeching halt. For the small factory town of Dongguan, China; that meant that factories that produce goods for US retailers began going under on a daily basis. After years of farmers moving to the coastal cities, like Dongguan, to work in factories, now everyone was heading homes. Factories had gone bankrupt, jobs had evaporated overnight. In the span of about four weeks from October to November 2008 thousands of factories went under and millions of jobs were lost. Entire housing blocks became empty, the streets once bustling now became silent. Those who opted to stay fought harder for fewer jobs. The seen was one of general chaos. These images were taken in November 2008 while on assignment for Newsweek.
Ryan Pyle Bio
Born in Toronto, Canada, Ryan Pyle spent his early years close to home. After obtaining a degree in International Politics from the University of Toronto in 2001, Ryan realized a life long dream and traveled to China on an exploratory mission. In 2002 Pyle moved to China permanently and began taking freelance assignments. In 2004, Ryan Pyle became a regular contributor to the New York Times covering China, more recently he has branched out in to mostly magazine. Ryan Pyle is based in Shanghai, China. Ryan is a reportage style photographer, working almost exclusively in 35mm format range finder cameras. His work drifts between journalism and fine art as he roams through China shedding light on the country and its diverse people.
_______________________________________
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, December 10, 2010
Ryan Pyle Blog: China & North Korea
Hello.
It's no surprise that North Korea is behaving badly, yet again. The collective leadership of the "Hermit Kingdom" know exactly what they are doing, and its incredibly destabilizing for not only Asia but the world. Sadly, trying to get North Korea to behave better or even stop their threatening actions seems impossible. Even leaked Chinese diplomatic cables sighted the North Korean leadership as collective acting like spoiled children.
An advanced ballistic missile program, a nuclear weapons program and now random attacks on South Korea. Who, out there in the diplomatic world, has the power to stop this insane behavior by this impoverished and heavily militarized country?
The only answer to this question is China. While South Korea and Japan bitch and moan all they want, they know any action towards North Korea would result in a backlash by China; and an escalation of military presence in the region. So, why doesn't China step up and squash this little country that is causing all the problems? I think many people could argue that the world would be a safer place, and the civilian population in North Korea would be much better off if the currrent regime were brought down. So why doesn't it happen?
The suggestion that ideological similarities keep China and North Korea in alliance is fodder. China is a global player and can't afford the bad press that comes along with supporting North Korea, so one must beg the question: Why does China continue to support this insane regime hell-bent on destabilizing Asia at least once a month?
Many have pointed out that a collapse of North Korea would send millions of refugee's in to northeastern China, which would not be helpful. Others have pointed out that a collapse of the regime in North Korea would leave the military and weapons systems in the hands of potential terrorists and individual players who might then launch attacks on South Korea and Japan. Those two points would lead to grave situations and they seem to keep the rest of the world bidding time and waiting, but waiting for what? The answer is for China to use its soft power and bring North Korea back into line.
China basically gives/sells North Korea all of its fuel, and food. There are a lot of cross-border businesses that are fairly lucrative for the Chinese; and according to some recent suggestions that tiny financial benefit is what is keeping China involved in propping up this regime. There were rumors in the news that a few lucrative contracts for business done in North Korea was given to some people close to Chinese Premier Wen.
When push comes to shove, the Chinese are all about pure hard cash. And what is the best environment for making money? The answer is stable growth. And that is what the Chinese are striving for within their own borders. North Korea challenges this in every way shape and form. I believe it is only a matter of time, one or two years, before China steps in and really disciplines North Korea. I can only hope there are reunification plans on the table for 2011, and that China does it's part and proves to the world that it is willing to flex its diplomatic muscles for good. I've written too many blogs about how screwed up North Korea is. Lets end the nightmare and shut down this bastard country and help some impoverished people. Below is a recent article about how China continues to defend North Korea. Clearly China needs to sort itself out first, the insanity continues.
Follow this LINK for original story on Reuters.
The story is also copied below. Copyright Reuters.
_________________________________________________________________
China hits back at criticism over North Korea
Written By Sui-Lee Wee and Jeremy Laurence
BEIJING/ SEOUL (Reuters) - China hit back at the United States and its Asian allies on Tuesday for their refusal to talk to North Korea, saying dialogue was the only way to calm escalating tension on the divided Korean peninsula.
China took a more belligerent tone a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hosted her South Korean and Japanese counterparts in Washington, calling a report that it was shielding Pyongyang's nuclear program an "irresponsible accusation."
Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg will lead a U.S. delegation to China in the next week to try to persuade Beijing to put more pressure on Pyongyang despite Chinese fears that this may destabilize North Korea, a U.S. official said.
Washington, Seoul and Tokyo have been lukewarm toward Beijing's proposal for emergency talks between the six regional powers, worried that they could be seen as rewarding Pyongyang for its deadly attack on a South Korean island two weeks ago.
They want China to bring its ally North Korea to heel and hope that through their joint calls Beijing -- which has traditionally resisted outside pressure on its policies -- may be persuaded to act.
"The responsibility of maintaining peace and stability in Northeast Asia should be shouldered by all parties in the region," China's foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a news conference.
"All parties are stakeholders. We call on the parties to positively respond to our proposals to resolve the conflict through dialogue and negotiation."
"We need a clear indication from North Korea that it understands that this pattern of provoking and then hoping that people will reward it to stop the provocations is not one that we are going to sanction," said Steinberg, Clinton's principal deputy.
China, the host of stalled six-party talks with North Korea, has been trying to take a neutral line in the dispute. It was not invited to Monday's trilateral meeting in Washington which put the onus on Beijing to take action.
NUCLEAR TALKS
Clinton said she was open to resuming talks on the North's nuclear ambitions -- the six-party talks include the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States -- but Pyongyang must first take steps to end its belligerence and keep its 2005 commitment to abandon its nuclear programs.
"I think the fact that it took (Chinese President) Hu (Jintao) and Obama 13 days even to talk about the attack shows what little chance there is of any real agreement," said Brian Myers, an expert on the North's ideology at Dongseo University.
"I agree with the South Korean consensus that the Chinese are simply trying to look like they're doing something for peace, without having to offend the North."
Analysts say Pyongyang will likely carry out more provocations following last month's attack and its latest revelations of nuclear advances for two reasons: to cement a father-to-son leadership transition and to win concessions at any international talks.
"The bottom line: North Korea isn't going to change is behavior any time soon, and the United States, South Korea and the world will have to live with this reality," said Andrew Scobell, a North Korea expert at the U.S. Army War College.
Analysts said China is reluctant to lean too hard on the North, which is undergoing a leadership transition, for fear of a collapse that could spark an exodus of refugees and allow U.S. troops in South Korea right up to the Chinese border.
"China is in a deepening dilemma: how to struggle with the balance between maintaining ties with Pyongyang and maintaining cooperation with Washington," said Zhu Feng, professor of international relations at Peking University.
"Maybe Beijing may be more motivated now to wake up to a new reality."
LIMITS TO POWER
But the United States also faces limits to the pressure it can apply on China. The two countries are enmeshed in a complicated economic relationship, with Washington looking to Beijing to help pull the global economy out of its slump.
"We hope that in increasing domestic consumption, China can become a catalyst for growth," Steinberg said, noting that better balanced U.S.-China economic ties would benefit both countries.
Senator John Kerry, the powerful Democrat who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said many in Washington were looking carefully at how Beijing handles both the North Korea issue and persistent tensions over its currency.
"This next year will define a lot of the next 10 years of our relationship with China," Kerry told a Washington think-tank audience.
Analysts say Beijing's relationship with Pyongyang provides a valuable communication bridge, but they consider China's influence over the North's as limited.
"China is not in control of North Korea. Most emphatically, it is not. It cannot do much, even if it wishes," said Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University in Seoul.
As South Korea staged live-fire drills around the country, Obama sent his top military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, to Seoul.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said he wants to turn the island that was attacked last month, as well as four others nearby, into "military fortresses" and called for improved living conditions to encourage civilians to return.
His comments came amid worries that many of the residents of Yeonpyeong and the other islands west of North Korea will not return as the North increasingly resorts to violence to reassert its claim over the area.
(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed, Andrew Quinn and Jeff Mason in Washington; and Michael Martina and Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing; Editing by David Storey and Christopher Wilson)
_________________________________________________________________
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
It's no surprise that North Korea is behaving badly, yet again. The collective leadership of the "Hermit Kingdom" know exactly what they are doing, and its incredibly destabilizing for not only Asia but the world. Sadly, trying to get North Korea to behave better or even stop their threatening actions seems impossible. Even leaked Chinese diplomatic cables sighted the North Korean leadership as collective acting like spoiled children.
An advanced ballistic missile program, a nuclear weapons program and now random attacks on South Korea. Who, out there in the diplomatic world, has the power to stop this insane behavior by this impoverished and heavily militarized country?
The only answer to this question is China. While South Korea and Japan bitch and moan all they want, they know any action towards North Korea would result in a backlash by China; and an escalation of military presence in the region. So, why doesn't China step up and squash this little country that is causing all the problems? I think many people could argue that the world would be a safer place, and the civilian population in North Korea would be much better off if the currrent regime were brought down. So why doesn't it happen?
The suggestion that ideological similarities keep China and North Korea in alliance is fodder. China is a global player and can't afford the bad press that comes along with supporting North Korea, so one must beg the question: Why does China continue to support this insane regime hell-bent on destabilizing Asia at least once a month?
Many have pointed out that a collapse of North Korea would send millions of refugee's in to northeastern China, which would not be helpful. Others have pointed out that a collapse of the regime in North Korea would leave the military and weapons systems in the hands of potential terrorists and individual players who might then launch attacks on South Korea and Japan. Those two points would lead to grave situations and they seem to keep the rest of the world bidding time and waiting, but waiting for what? The answer is for China to use its soft power and bring North Korea back into line.
China basically gives/sells North Korea all of its fuel, and food. There are a lot of cross-border businesses that are fairly lucrative for the Chinese; and according to some recent suggestions that tiny financial benefit is what is keeping China involved in propping up this regime. There were rumors in the news that a few lucrative contracts for business done in North Korea was given to some people close to Chinese Premier Wen.
When push comes to shove, the Chinese are all about pure hard cash. And what is the best environment for making money? The answer is stable growth. And that is what the Chinese are striving for within their own borders. North Korea challenges this in every way shape and form. I believe it is only a matter of time, one or two years, before China steps in and really disciplines North Korea. I can only hope there are reunification plans on the table for 2011, and that China does it's part and proves to the world that it is willing to flex its diplomatic muscles for good. I've written too many blogs about how screwed up North Korea is. Lets end the nightmare and shut down this bastard country and help some impoverished people. Below is a recent article about how China continues to defend North Korea. Clearly China needs to sort itself out first, the insanity continues.
Follow this LINK for original story on Reuters.
The story is also copied below. Copyright Reuters.
_________________________________________________________________
China hits back at criticism over North Korea
Written By Sui-Lee Wee and Jeremy Laurence
BEIJING/ SEOUL (Reuters) - China hit back at the United States and its Asian allies on Tuesday for their refusal to talk to North Korea, saying dialogue was the only way to calm escalating tension on the divided Korean peninsula.
China took a more belligerent tone a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hosted her South Korean and Japanese counterparts in Washington, calling a report that it was shielding Pyongyang's nuclear program an "irresponsible accusation."
Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg will lead a U.S. delegation to China in the next week to try to persuade Beijing to put more pressure on Pyongyang despite Chinese fears that this may destabilize North Korea, a U.S. official said.
Washington, Seoul and Tokyo have been lukewarm toward Beijing's proposal for emergency talks between the six regional powers, worried that they could be seen as rewarding Pyongyang for its deadly attack on a South Korean island two weeks ago.
They want China to bring its ally North Korea to heel and hope that through their joint calls Beijing -- which has traditionally resisted outside pressure on its policies -- may be persuaded to act.
"The responsibility of maintaining peace and stability in Northeast Asia should be shouldered by all parties in the region," China's foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a news conference.
"All parties are stakeholders. We call on the parties to positively respond to our proposals to resolve the conflict through dialogue and negotiation."
"We need a clear indication from North Korea that it understands that this pattern of provoking and then hoping that people will reward it to stop the provocations is not one that we are going to sanction," said Steinberg, Clinton's principal deputy.
China, the host of stalled six-party talks with North Korea, has been trying to take a neutral line in the dispute. It was not invited to Monday's trilateral meeting in Washington which put the onus on Beijing to take action.
NUCLEAR TALKS
Clinton said she was open to resuming talks on the North's nuclear ambitions -- the six-party talks include the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States -- but Pyongyang must first take steps to end its belligerence and keep its 2005 commitment to abandon its nuclear programs.
"I think the fact that it took (Chinese President) Hu (Jintao) and Obama 13 days even to talk about the attack shows what little chance there is of any real agreement," said Brian Myers, an expert on the North's ideology at Dongseo University.
"I agree with the South Korean consensus that the Chinese are simply trying to look like they're doing something for peace, without having to offend the North."
Analysts say Pyongyang will likely carry out more provocations following last month's attack and its latest revelations of nuclear advances for two reasons: to cement a father-to-son leadership transition and to win concessions at any international talks.
"The bottom line: North Korea isn't going to change is behavior any time soon, and the United States, South Korea and the world will have to live with this reality," said Andrew Scobell, a North Korea expert at the U.S. Army War College.
Analysts said China is reluctant to lean too hard on the North, which is undergoing a leadership transition, for fear of a collapse that could spark an exodus of refugees and allow U.S. troops in South Korea right up to the Chinese border.
"China is in a deepening dilemma: how to struggle with the balance between maintaining ties with Pyongyang and maintaining cooperation with Washington," said Zhu Feng, professor of international relations at Peking University.
"Maybe Beijing may be more motivated now to wake up to a new reality."
LIMITS TO POWER
But the United States also faces limits to the pressure it can apply on China. The two countries are enmeshed in a complicated economic relationship, with Washington looking to Beijing to help pull the global economy out of its slump.
"We hope that in increasing domestic consumption, China can become a catalyst for growth," Steinberg said, noting that better balanced U.S.-China economic ties would benefit both countries.
Senator John Kerry, the powerful Democrat who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said many in Washington were looking carefully at how Beijing handles both the North Korea issue and persistent tensions over its currency.
"This next year will define a lot of the next 10 years of our relationship with China," Kerry told a Washington think-tank audience.
Analysts say Beijing's relationship with Pyongyang provides a valuable communication bridge, but they consider China's influence over the North's as limited.
"China is not in control of North Korea. Most emphatically, it is not. It cannot do much, even if it wishes," said Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University in Seoul.
As South Korea staged live-fire drills around the country, Obama sent his top military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, to Seoul.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said he wants to turn the island that was attacked last month, as well as four others nearby, into "military fortresses" and called for improved living conditions to encourage civilians to return.
His comments came amid worries that many of the residents of Yeonpyeong and the other islands west of North Korea will not return as the North increasingly resorts to violence to reassert its claim over the area.
(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed, Andrew Quinn and Jeff Mason in Washington; and Michael Martina and Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing; Editing by David Storey and Christopher Wilson)
_________________________________________________________________
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, November 26, 2010
Ryan Pyle Blog: 100 Eyes Magazine - China Issue
Hello,
The 100 Eyes online magazine is a great showcase for documentary photography. Their mission statement on their website indicates that they "100Eyes is an online photographic showcase featuring contemporary photography including documentary, art, and alternative photojournalism. Edited and created by Andy Levin, 100Eyes is made possible by the generosity of photographers who donate their work in the spirit of a shared photographic community."
This months issue revolves around China and was edited by Andy Levin. It includes some stunning photography by a host of lovely image makers, I am honored to be among them as some of my work appears in the magazine.
To view the photo essay, which includes a wide range of photography and a wide range of story-telling, follow think LINK.
Enjoy,
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
The 100 Eyes online magazine is a great showcase for documentary photography. Their mission statement on their website indicates that they "100Eyes is an online photographic showcase featuring contemporary photography including documentary, art, and alternative photojournalism. Edited and created by Andy Levin, 100Eyes is made possible by the generosity of photographers who donate their work in the spirit of a shared photographic community."
This months issue revolves around China and was edited by Andy Levin. It includes some stunning photography by a host of lovely image makers, I am honored to be among them as some of my work appears in the magazine.
To view the photo essay, which includes a wide range of photography and a wide range of story-telling, follow think LINK.
Enjoy,
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, November 19, 2010
Ryan Pyle Blog: New Work - NYT - GAP in Shanghai
Hello,
I just wanted to direct your attention to some new work. The GAP has opened up a store in Shanghai and I covered the story for the New York Times. It wasn't as exciting as my motorcycle adventure around China, but it's great to be back taking pictures again. Can't wait to get back in to my photography career.
New York Times Story - GAP opens in Shanghai.
A special thanks to all my clients who wished me luck on my motorcycle ride, and thanks for giving me a chance to continue working for you as we move forward.
Cheers,
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Ryan Pyle Blog: The Middle Kingdom Ride
Hello.
I just wanted to write a brief email to introduce you to a new project that I began working on today. It's name is "The Middle Kingdom Ride".
The project will involve both myself and my brother, Colin Pyle, circumnavigating China by BMW motorcycle. To date, no one has ever attempted such a journey; we have the opportunity to be the first. Our 60 day - 20,000km - journey will take us through some of the most remote and populated regions of the world. To say the least, it will be an epic journey. We left Shanghai, China this morning at 6am.
You can follow us on our dedicated website: www.mkride.com.
You can also follow us on our blog: www.mkride.com/blog
Colin and I will be writing throughout our journey with the goal of producing a co-authored book, as well as a documentary film and of course I'll be taking pictures the entire time. Our 60 day journey will take us on a "once in a lifetime" adventure. We hope that you opt to follow our journey and connect with us while we are on the road. We depart on Saturday August 14th 2010 @ 6am from my home in Shanghai, China.
Colin and I will be sure to stay in touch.
You can connect with us on: FACEBOOK, TWITTER, YOUTUBE
The Middle Kingdom Ride wouldn't happen without our wonderful SPONSORS: BMW, Touratech, Airhawk, Pelican, Kodak, Oakley, Cardo Systems, Lowe Pro & Mandarin House.
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
I just wanted to write a brief email to introduce you to a new project that I began working on today. It's name is "The Middle Kingdom Ride".
The project will involve both myself and my brother, Colin Pyle, circumnavigating China by BMW motorcycle. To date, no one has ever attempted such a journey; we have the opportunity to be the first. Our 60 day - 20,000km - journey will take us through some of the most remote and populated regions of the world. To say the least, it will be an epic journey. We left Shanghai, China this morning at 6am.
You can follow us on our dedicated website: www.mkride.com.
You can also follow us on our blog: www.mkride.com/blog
Colin and I will be writing throughout our journey with the goal of producing a co-authored book, as well as a documentary film and of course I'll be taking pictures the entire time. Our 60 day journey will take us on a "once in a lifetime" adventure. We hope that you opt to follow our journey and connect with us while we are on the road. We depart on Saturday August 14th 2010 @ 6am from my home in Shanghai, China.
Colin and I will be sure to stay in touch.
You can connect with us on: FACEBOOK, TWITTER, YOUTUBE
The Middle Kingdom Ride wouldn't happen without our wonderful SPONSORS: BMW, Touratech, Airhawk, Pelican, Kodak, Oakley, Cardo Systems, Lowe Pro & Mandarin House.
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, August 06, 2010
Ryan Pyle Blog: The New China - Yes, it's a Lamborgini
Hello,
This picture above, and the post below was created by a good friend of mine, Jeffrey Parker. He was in Beijing earlier this week visiting a grocery store when he came past a PINK Lamborgini. Behind the wheel was a barely 20 year old women who clearly couldn't drive or park.
The post is interesting because it is a stark reminder that yes, with all the poverty and the messy politics of China, there are still a lot of people out there who can buy their favorite mistress (one of many no doubt) a pink Lamborgini - so she can drive it to pick up her Sunday groceries.
Check the original link, below, for more pictures.
Original LINK
_________________________
his series doesn't really need much explanation. But I'll set the stage. I was on my bicycle, just coming out of the Beijing Carrefour on Sunday afternoon, which of all the worst times to be in the Carrefour parking lot ranks about the top. Only a holiday Sunday it could be worse. So I'm navigating among untold numbers of newbie drivers in their newbie cars, and come upon this:
Is this really what it looks like? Surely it's a kit car -- a converted VW bug. I swing back around for a closer look. You can't quite tell, but it's an, er, sheila, at the wheel, as I suppose might be indicated by the color scheme.
And she's clearly a newbie. She's very unsure of her driving, and finally hops out. The young swain in the passenger seat hops in to finish the parallel parking, while she stands in the street watching.
Here's the dude, inspecting his parking job. Note the owner's shoes, which do not appear to be stock for this model.
No plates on this lovely urban getabout, but what's this? A rhinestone badge!
Couldn't do much about the glare, but this clearly is not a VW conversion kit car, as can be seen through the glass engine cover. That's hardly a surprise. I've only seen maybe two air-cooled veedubs in all my 20 years in China.
Yes, it's really, truly a pink Lambo Gallardo.
Yes, This is China.
_________________________
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, July 23, 2010
Ryan Pyle Blog: My 200th Blog
Hello.
Well, somehow over the last few years I've managed to coordinate my thoughts enough to write 200 blogs. They have been a mix of opinion, sharing new work, announcements and commentary on other people's writing and photography.
I don't have much clue as to how many people follow my blog or view it but for those of you who do write, or take the time to make comments I would like to say thanks. Every bit of feedback helps and I appreciate those who take the time to stop by the blog and read a bit.
Hopefully I can find the time to keep this blog moving along in the next few years. Fingers crossed.
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Well, somehow over the last few years I've managed to coordinate my thoughts enough to write 200 blogs. They have been a mix of opinion, sharing new work, announcements and commentary on other people's writing and photography.
I don't have much clue as to how many people follow my blog or view it but for those of you who do write, or take the time to make comments I would like to say thanks. Every bit of feedback helps and I appreciate those who take the time to stop by the blog and read a bit.
Hopefully I can find the time to keep this blog moving along in the next few years. Fingers crossed.
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, July 16, 2010
Ryan Pyle Blog: Xinhua Bylines in Newsweek?
Hello,
We all need to be ready for it. This is my warning to us all. Large Chinese media conglomerates have their eyes set on storied western media brands, and they are cash rich and ethics poor. A few weeks back the Southern Media Group, based in Guangzhou, made an unsuccessful attempt to purchase Newsweek.
My heart nearly stopped.
Newsweek are one of my clients, and they are in financial difficultly. There has been no secrete that the magazine is up for sale and there have been many suitors. I think the independent global media needs to be very fearful about Chinese media companies expanding abroad on the backs of western brands. The Chinese suitors bring with them a complete set of journalism ethics and morals than those of the west.
Evan Osnos, a wonderful writer and the New Yorkers man in China, sums it all up wonderful in his blog post below.
The New Yorker
Written by: Evan Osnos
Original LINK
__________________________________________
WHAT IF CHINA HAD BOUGHT NEWSWEEK?
Posted by Evan Osnos
The news that bidders for Newsweek included China’s Southern Media Group—a bid that was rejected—has left all sides a bit insulted. For Newsweek, the prospect of being bought by a company in the world’s No. 2 jailer of journalists (Iran is number one) appears to have been too grim to take seriously. For American journalists generally, the implication that our industry is edging toward a fire sale was not especially welcome. And, for the Chinese bidders, it sounds like they’ve been stung by the sense that they were not treated as legitimate prospects. As Xiang Xi, executive editor of Southern Weekly, part of the Southern Media Group, put it in an interview with an Anhui paper: “[T]he seller genuinely does not comprehend the desires of idealistic Chinese media workers and institutions.” (Translated by Global Voices.) Moreover, he said, “Even though the purchase of Newsweek failed, the search for investments will continue.” He encouraged “any media of global influence” that may be interested to drop him a line. He even provided his e-mail address: xiangxi100@hotmail.com.
The fact is that neither side truly understands the other in this case. The prospective buyers are not wrong that they have a right to bid on an American news organization, but they are wrong that they had the remotest shot of succeeding. For the moment, the spiritual gap between them and American news organizations is larger than even the most sober Chinese media baron probably imagines. A sale of this kind is, for the moment, beyond imagination.
But it’s also true that Xiang Xi is not being cynical when he says that most Americans don’t grasp the “desires of idealistic Chinese media workers.” Much of the discussion about the Newsweek bid has been about the Chinese government’s campaign to project “soft power” abroad, and that is relevant. But that is also losing sight of some nuances in the world of Chinese media. Like every newspaper in China, those in the Southern Media Group are owned by the state, and the party appoints the top editors. But the Southern Media Group is not the People’s Daily, and the differences are worth acknowledging.
The Southern Newspaper Group was an oasis of open-minded thinking in the state’s hidebound media empire, and it was known for pushing the limits within the propaganda apparatus. Its most daring publication, a paper based in Guangzhou named the Southern Weekend was winning readers and inspiring journalists across the country by showing how aggressive reporting and elegant writing could be possible despite censorship. On the Communist organization charts, the Group was part of the propaganda bureaucracy, but it also occupied a special place in the informal web of interest groups that made up the party. Ideologically, it was a camp for the party’s liberal wing. The editors of its newspapers were heirs to a tradition that began in 1957 during the Hundred Flowers Movement, when their predecessors launched a paper that gave voice to opinions that differed from the party line. One of the founders … argued that even if political conditions made it impossible for journalists to always write the truth, they should at least refuse to publish lies. Generation after generation, the editors of the Southern Newspaper Group tried to live up to that standard.”
In 2003, one of the Southern Group’s editors, Cheng Yizhong, dared to publish an investigation into the death of Sun Zhigang, a young graphic designer who died in police custody after a beating—a report that led to the discovery and closure of a nationwide network of seven hundred underground police-run detention camps—an astonishing case of the Chinese press influencing national policy. But, as Pan wrote, Cheng was detained for doing it; he spent five months in a detention center and now works in a low-profile media job. His two colleagues were sentenced to long jail terms. Before he went to jail, he gave a speech to his staff that included this line: “Whatever happens, we must not give up the values and beliefs of the Southern Metropolis Daily. We have reason to be proud.”
It was a courageous sentiment from someone working in a profoundly imperfect system. I wouldn’t want to be owned by them either, and I don’t expect it will happen anytime soon. But, let’s not sneer too much. As colleagues in a business that is tough enough, Chinese journalists deserve our respect.
__________________________________________
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
We all need to be ready for it. This is my warning to us all. Large Chinese media conglomerates have their eyes set on storied western media brands, and they are cash rich and ethics poor. A few weeks back the Southern Media Group, based in Guangzhou, made an unsuccessful attempt to purchase Newsweek.
My heart nearly stopped.
Newsweek are one of my clients, and they are in financial difficultly. There has been no secrete that the magazine is up for sale and there have been many suitors. I think the independent global media needs to be very fearful about Chinese media companies expanding abroad on the backs of western brands. The Chinese suitors bring with them a complete set of journalism ethics and morals than those of the west.
Evan Osnos, a wonderful writer and the New Yorkers man in China, sums it all up wonderful in his blog post below.
The New Yorker
Written by: Evan Osnos
Original LINK
__________________________________________
WHAT IF CHINA HAD BOUGHT NEWSWEEK?
Posted by Evan Osnos
The news that bidders for Newsweek included China’s Southern Media Group—a bid that was rejected—has left all sides a bit insulted. For Newsweek, the prospect of being bought by a company in the world’s No. 2 jailer of journalists (Iran is number one) appears to have been too grim to take seriously. For American journalists generally, the implication that our industry is edging toward a fire sale was not especially welcome. And, for the Chinese bidders, it sounds like they’ve been stung by the sense that they were not treated as legitimate prospects. As Xiang Xi, executive editor of Southern Weekly, part of the Southern Media Group, put it in an interview with an Anhui paper: “[T]he seller genuinely does not comprehend the desires of idealistic Chinese media workers and institutions.” (Translated by Global Voices.) Moreover, he said, “Even though the purchase of Newsweek failed, the search for investments will continue.” He encouraged “any media of global influence” that may be interested to drop him a line. He even provided his e-mail address: xiangxi100@hotmail.com.
The fact is that neither side truly understands the other in this case. The prospective buyers are not wrong that they have a right to bid on an American news organization, but they are wrong that they had the remotest shot of succeeding. For the moment, the spiritual gap between them and American news organizations is larger than even the most sober Chinese media baron probably imagines. A sale of this kind is, for the moment, beyond imagination.
But it’s also true that Xiang Xi is not being cynical when he says that most Americans don’t grasp the “desires of idealistic Chinese media workers.” Much of the discussion about the Newsweek bid has been about the Chinese government’s campaign to project “soft power” abroad, and that is relevant. But that is also losing sight of some nuances in the world of Chinese media. Like every newspaper in China, those in the Southern Media Group are owned by the state, and the party appoints the top editors. But the Southern Media Group is not the People’s Daily, and the differences are worth acknowledging.
The Southern Newspaper Group was an oasis of open-minded thinking in the state’s hidebound media empire, and it was known for pushing the limits within the propaganda apparatus. Its most daring publication, a paper based in Guangzhou named the Southern Weekend was winning readers and inspiring journalists across the country by showing how aggressive reporting and elegant writing could be possible despite censorship. On the Communist organization charts, the Group was part of the propaganda bureaucracy, but it also occupied a special place in the informal web of interest groups that made up the party. Ideologically, it was a camp for the party’s liberal wing. The editors of its newspapers were heirs to a tradition that began in 1957 during the Hundred Flowers Movement, when their predecessors launched a paper that gave voice to opinions that differed from the party line. One of the founders … argued that even if political conditions made it impossible for journalists to always write the truth, they should at least refuse to publish lies. Generation after generation, the editors of the Southern Newspaper Group tried to live up to that standard.”
In 2003, one of the Southern Group’s editors, Cheng Yizhong, dared to publish an investigation into the death of Sun Zhigang, a young graphic designer who died in police custody after a beating—a report that led to the discovery and closure of a nationwide network of seven hundred underground police-run detention camps—an astonishing case of the Chinese press influencing national policy. But, as Pan wrote, Cheng was detained for doing it; he spent five months in a detention center and now works in a low-profile media job. His two colleagues were sentenced to long jail terms. Before he went to jail, he gave a speech to his staff that included this line: “Whatever happens, we must not give up the values and beliefs of the Southern Metropolis Daily. We have reason to be proud.”
It was a courageous sentiment from someone working in a profoundly imperfect system. I wouldn’t want to be owned by them either, and I don’t expect it will happen anytime soon. But, let’s not sneer too much. As colleagues in a business that is tough enough, Chinese journalists deserve our respect.
__________________________________________
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, July 02, 2010
Ryan Pyle Blog: Global Times Interview
Hello,
I was contacted a while back by a reporter from the Global Times, an English language daily newspaper in China. They wanted to do a story about what it was like being a photographer based in China. I thought it would be an interesting story and the reporter seemed genuinely interested in knowing about what life was like for freelancers in China.
The interview lasted about thirty minutes. And the article was posted in the weekend edition of the paper a few weeks back. I never saw a hard copy, but below is the online version I found on SINA.com. It's not too exciting but I thought it would make a semi-interesting read and blog post.
The original story on SINA.com can be found HERE
______________________________________
When we think of how the 20th century's most important events are best remembered, it's usually as images as opposed to stories. Be it a starving African child covered in flies, a girl fleeing a napalm attack, or a destitute family of the Dust Bowl, each of these epoch-defining images were captured by photojournalists in the field. Our perception of such people can be clouded by romantic notions of daring, intrepid risk and adventure. To find out about real life in the industry, the Global Times sat down with two of Shanghai's most prominent foreign photojournalists to discuss their lives reporting on China through a lens.
Romantic? Think again
Ryan Pyle from Toronto has been working in China as a freelance photojournalist since 2001. Despite having no formal training, the 31-year-old has worked with publications such as the New York Times, News Week and the Sunday Times. During his time in China, Pyle has covered major events such as the Sichuan earthquake, an experience he describes as "very emotional." But he is quick to dispel any preconceived notions about his job. "A lot of people think this job is romantic because you get to travel and see interesting things. But believe me it's not. Not many people realize just how tough it is."
One of the most demanding aspects of the job is having to remain on alert day and night and to be ready to take off whenever a news story breaks. "You might just be given a day, a few hours, or even just half an hour before having to set off." He went on to say that, "we usually stay in cheap hotels where the KTV is on downstairs and you don't get a wink of sleep. I've had many nights like this although hotels in China are getting better."
In addition to being vigilant, Pyle's working hours are often irregular because many of the publications he works for are based outside China. "I wake up at 6 am and deal with people from the US. In the daytime I shoot pictures and then in the evening I talk with publications in Europe. At night I'm back dealing with people in the US again."
Stiff competition
According to Paris-born Tim Franco who works for the French newspaper Le Monde, competition is becoming ever more fierce among photojournalists in China. Franco, 27, believes this is a result of China being increasingly placed under the media spotlight, and as more and more journalists pour into Shanghai every year, assignments are harder to come by.
Ryan Pyle told the Global Times that missing just one phone call from a newspaper can make the difference between getting and losing a job as there is always another photographer instantly available. "Unless you are 60 years old or have won 10 World Press Photo Awards no-one is going to wait for you. Even though I'm 31 years old and fairly experienced, newspapers won't wait for someone like me all the time."
Unfortunately, even for those established in the industry, earnings are relatively low and the work is irregular. While waiting for work, many photojournalists do corporate photography to make ends meet.
"Photojournalism is not a lucrative career - if anything it's a dying profession," said Tim Franco. "Publishing has been squeezed by the recession and photojournalists are the first to be dropped. Clients can use cheaper photo agencies instead. I know people who are published regularly in Time Magazine and they still can't pay their bills. Even the top guys will do advertising work. They have to."
Ryan Pyle agrees, but insists that corporate work isn't necessarily the "cop out" it's painted to be. "It is much more highly paid than editorial work and it can often take you to more interesting places than news assignments. I've been inside the Three-Gorges dam, for example, doing corporate work."
Teamwork
A key element to the work involves collaboration with writers as newspapers prefer the photographer and the writer to share the experience in order to achieve a balanced, coherent narrative. Franco told the Global Times that this bond can be one of the most rewarding aspects of the job. "I love the relationship between myself and the writer. It's like a voyage of discovery." Ryan Pyle said of this alliance between writer and photographer, "When you're on assignment, it's the writer who controls the schedule, but most of the writers I work with are very understanding about the photos. It's mostly an easy-going, collaborative experience."
Photogenic China
Despite the hardship and stiff competition, working as a photojournalist in China presents many attractive opportunities. "It is probably the greatest country in the world to do photography in right now," said Ryan Pyle. "I think the changing social economy of China makes for such rich imagery.
I feel really lucky to be here at this time because in 30 years I don't know what China will look like so I want to document it now. China is such a fascinating country; the diversity of people here alone is probably greater than anywhere else on earth."
______________________________________
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, June 11, 2010
Ryan Pyle Blog: A Real Use for Butts
Hello.
In the land of 1.3 billion people is it amazing to believe that there are 300+ million smokers. Apparently some 60% of all Chinese men smoke, which if you've travelled in the countryside you'll know that the number is more like 90%.
But alas, someone has figured out a use for cigarette butts. The chemicals found in a cigarette butt are so toxic that they can kill fish, but those same chemicals are also great for protecting steel pipes from rusting.
Finding a practical use for cigarette butts sounds great. But how does one go about collecting them and keeping them off the streets and out of the water system and out of the landfills?
More research needed. You know, I've been trying to visit to photograph a Tobacco plant for years now; the problem is that they are all government owned :(. It may never happen. Original story below:
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Copyright: Reuters
Title: China scientists find use for cigarette butts
Original Story LINK
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chemical extracts from cigarette butts -- so toxic they kill fish -- can be used to protect
steel pipes from rusting, a study in China has found.
In a paper published in the American Chemical Society's bi-weekly journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, the scientists in China said they identified nine chemicals after immersing cigarette butts in water.
They applied the extracts to N80, a type of steel used in oil pipes, and found that they protected the steel from rusting.
"The metal surface can be protected and the iron atom's further dissolution can be prevented," they wrote.
The chemicals, including nicotine, appear to be responsible for this anti-corrosion effect, they added.
The research was led by Jun Zhao at Xi'an Jiaotong University's School of Energy and Power Engineering and funded by China's state oil firm China National Petroleum Corporation.
Corrosion of steel pipes used by the oil industry costs oil producers millions of dollars annually to repair or replace.
According to the paper, 4.5 trillion cigarette butts find their way into the environment each year. Apart from being an eyesore, they contain toxins that can kill fish.
"Recycling could solve those problems, but finding practical uses for cigarette butts has been difficult," the researchers wrote.
China, which has 300 million smokers, is the world's largest smoking nation and it consumes a third of the world's cigarettes. Nearly 60 percent of men in China smoke, puffing an average of 15 cigarettes per day.
(Reporting by Tan Ee Lyn; Editing by Miral Fahmy)
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--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
In the land of 1.3 billion people is it amazing to believe that there are 300+ million smokers. Apparently some 60% of all Chinese men smoke, which if you've travelled in the countryside you'll know that the number is more like 90%.
But alas, someone has figured out a use for cigarette butts. The chemicals found in a cigarette butt are so toxic that they can kill fish, but those same chemicals are also great for protecting steel pipes from rusting.
Finding a practical use for cigarette butts sounds great. But how does one go about collecting them and keeping them off the streets and out of the water system and out of the landfills?
More research needed. You know, I've been trying to visit to photograph a Tobacco plant for years now; the problem is that they are all government owned :(. It may never happen. Original story below:
________________________________________________
Copyright: Reuters
Title: China scientists find use for cigarette butts
Original Story LINK
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chemical extracts from cigarette butts -- so toxic they kill fish -- can be used to protect
steel pipes from rusting, a study in China has found.
In a paper published in the American Chemical Society's bi-weekly journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, the scientists in China said they identified nine chemicals after immersing cigarette butts in water.
They applied the extracts to N80, a type of steel used in oil pipes, and found that they protected the steel from rusting.
"The metal surface can be protected and the iron atom's further dissolution can be prevented," they wrote.
The chemicals, including nicotine, appear to be responsible for this anti-corrosion effect, they added.
The research was led by Jun Zhao at Xi'an Jiaotong University's School of Energy and Power Engineering and funded by China's state oil firm China National Petroleum Corporation.
Corrosion of steel pipes used by the oil industry costs oil producers millions of dollars annually to repair or replace.
According to the paper, 4.5 trillion cigarette butts find their way into the environment each year. Apart from being an eyesore, they contain toxins that can kill fish.
"Recycling could solve those problems, but finding practical uses for cigarette butts has been difficult," the researchers wrote.
China, which has 300 million smokers, is the world's largest smoking nation and it consumes a third of the world's cigarettes. Nearly 60 percent of men in China smoke, puffing an average of 15 cigarettes per day.
(Reporting by Tan Ee Lyn; Editing by Miral Fahmy)
________________________________________________
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
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