Hello,
As some of you may know I've been working in China's earthquake ravaged Sichuan province for the last week or so and I've put together a strong selection of images that show the devastation that has hit the region.
I was recently interviewed by Daryl Lang of PDN Magazine on what my experiences covering the earthquake were like. Please follow the link below for article, interview and audio slide show.
Ryan Pyle
LINK: http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/newswire/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003807190
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, May 23, 2008
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Ryan Pyle Blog: Photo District News Award
Hello,
I just wanted to share some good news with everyone. An image of mine was recently included in the PDN Photo Annual. The PDN Photo Annual is an awards contest run by PDN, a photo industry magazine. The Photo Annual is a collection of the years most compelling images. I am very honored to have my work appear next to mentors of mine like Ed Kashi and Paolo Pellegrin.
The image I had selected is below, it was a story about China's first face transplant patient.
PDN LINK: http://gallery.pdnevents.com/annual2008/
Image LINK: http://archive.ryanpyle.com/my/Common/PhotoDetailPage.aspx?msa=0&pid=9741074&slid=872ff80f-20ed-40a7-903f-d75ee49a771a&slididx=21&lid=9746836&rstid=0eaa01db-e87a-42b9-8b40-568b5672d4b3&aid=1
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
I just wanted to share some good news with everyone. An image of mine was recently included in the PDN Photo Annual. The PDN Photo Annual is an awards contest run by PDN, a photo industry magazine. The Photo Annual is a collection of the years most compelling images. I am very honored to have my work appear next to mentors of mine like Ed Kashi and Paolo Pellegrin.
The image I had selected is below, it was a story about China's first face transplant patient.
PDN LINK: http://gallery.pdnevents.com/annual2008/
Image LINK: http://archive.ryanpyle.com/my/Common/PhotoDetailPage.aspx?msa=0&pid=9741074&slid=872ff80f-20ed-40a7-903f-d75ee49a771a&slididx=21&lid=9746836&rstid=0eaa01db-e87a-42b9-8b40-568b5672d4b3&aid=1
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Ryan Pyle Blog: The Real China and the Olympics
Hello,
I found this article on the Washington Post today and I feel that it needs to be shared. While I may not agree with all the points the writers raise, I do feel that it should be read and debated openly.
I have copied this from the Washington Post website and without prior consent by either the authors or the newspaper, should anyone object to my posting please let me know and I will remove it. I am not the author of this work, and my only reason for posting this piece to increase the exposure of this article. The article, and the direct link to the Washington Post are listed below:
LINK: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/04/AR2008040402982_pf.html
Article
______________________________
The Real China and the Olympics
By Hu Jia and Teng Biao
Saturday, April 5, 2008; A15
This week, a Beijing court sentenced human rights activist Hu Jia to 3 1/2 years in prison for subverting state authority and to one additional year's loss of his "political rights." He was arrested in part for co-authoring, with Teng Biao, an open letter on human rights. Below, The Post printsHuman Rights Watch's translation of the Sept. 10, 2007, letter.
On July 13th 2001, when Beijing won the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games, the Chinese government promised the world it would improve China's human rights record. In June 2004, Beijing announced its Olympic Games slogan, "One World, One Dream." From their inception in 1896, the modern Olympic Games have always had as their mission the promotion of human dignity and world peace. China and the world expected to see the Olympic Games bring political progress to the country. Is Beijing keeping its promises? Is China improving its human rights record?
When you come to the Olympic Games in Beijing, you will see skyscrapers, spacious streets, modern stadiums and enthusiastic people. You will see the truth, but not the whole truth, just as you see only the tip of an iceberg. You may not know that the flowers, smiles, harmony and prosperity are built on a base of grievances, tears, imprisonment, torture and blood.
We are going to tell you the truth about China. We believe that for anyone who wishes to avoid a disgraceful Olympics, knowing the truth is the first step. Fang Zheng, an excellent athlete who holds two national records for the discus throw at China's Special Sport Games, has been deprived of the opportunity to participate in the 2008 Paralympics because he has become a living testimony to the June 4, 1989[,] massacre. That morning, in Tiananmen Square, his legs were crushed by a tank while he was rescuing a fellow student. In April 2007, the Ministry of Public Security issued an internal document secretly strengthening a political investigation which resulted in forbidding Olympics participation by 43 types of people from 11 different categories, including dissidents, human rights defenders, media workers, and religious participants. The Chinese police never made the document known to either the Chinese public or the international community.
Huge investment in Olympic projects and a total lack of transparency have facilitated serious corruption and widespread bribery. Taxpayers are not allowed to supervise the use of investment amounting to more than $40 billion. Liu Zhihua, formerly in charge of Olympic construction and former deputy mayor of Beijing, was arrested for massive embezzlement.
To clear space for Olympic-related construction, thousands of civilian houses have been destroyed without their former owners being properly compensated. Brothers Ye Guozhu and Ye Guoqiang were imprisoned for a legal appeal after their house was forcibly demolished. Ye Guozhu has been repeatedly handcuffed and shackled, tied to a bed and beaten with electric batons. During the countdown to the Olympic Games he will continue to suffer from torture in Chaobei Prison in Tianjin.
It has been reported that over 1.25 million people have been forced to move because of Olympic construction; it was estimated that the figure would reach 1.5 million by the end of 2007. No formal resettlement scheme is in place for the over 400,000 migrants who have had their dwelling places demolished. Twenty percent of the demolished households are expected to experience poverty or extreme poverty. In Qingdao, the Olympic sailing city, hundreds of households have been demolished and many human rights activists as well as "civilians" have been imprisoned. Similar stories come from other Olympic cities such as Shenyang, Shanghai and Qinhuangdao.
In order to establish the image of civilized cities, the government has intensified the ban against -- and detention and forced repatriation of -- petitioners, beggars and the homeless. Some of them have been kept in extended detention in so-called shelters or have even been sent directly to labor camps. Street vendors have suffered brutal confiscation of their goods by municipal agents. On July 20, 2005, Lin Hongying, a 56-year-old woman farmer and vegetable dealer, was beaten to death by city patrols in Jiangsu. On November 19, 2005, city patrols in Wuxi beat 54-year-old bicycle repairman Wu Shouqing to death. In January 2007, petitioner Duan Huimin was killed by Shanghai police. On July 1, 2007, Chen Xiaoming, a Shanghai petitioner and human rights activist, died of an untreated illness during a lengthy detention period. On August 5, 2007, right before the one-year Olympics countdown, 200 petitioners were arrested in Beijing.
China has consistently persecuted human rights activists, political dissidents and freelance writers and journalists. The blind activist Chen Guangcheng, recipient of the 2007 Ramon Magsaysay Award and named in 2006 by Time Magazine as one of the most influential 100 people shaping our world, is still serving his sentence of four years and three months for exposing the truth of forced abortion and sterilization. The government refused to give him the Braille books and the radio that his relatives and friends brought to Linyi prison in Shandong. Chen has been beaten while serving his sentence. On August 24, 2007, Chen's wife, Yuan Weijing, was kidnapped by police at the Beijing airport while waiting to fly to the Philippines to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award on behalf of her husband. On August 13, 2007, activist Yang Chunlin was arrested in Heilongjiang and charged with subversion of state power "for initiating the petition 'Human Rights before Olympics.' "
China still practices literary inquisition and holds the world record for detaining journalists and writers, as many as several hundred since 1989, according to incomplete statistics. As of this writing, 35 Chinese journalists and 51 writers are still in prison. Over 90 percent were arrested or tried after Beijing's successful bid for the Olympics in July 2001. For example, Shi Tao, a journalist and a poet, was sentenced to ten years in prison because of an e-mail sent to an overseas website. Dr. Xu Zerong, a scholar from Oxford University who researched the Korean War, was sentenced to 13 years' imprisonment for "illegally providing information abroad." Qingshuijun [Huang Jinqiu], a freelance writer, was sentenced to a 12-year term for his online publications. Some writers and dissidents are prohibited from going abroad; others from returning to China.
Every year in mainland China, countless websites are closed, blogs deleted, sensitive words filtered. Many websites hosted abroad are blocked. Overseas radio and television programs are interfered with or strictly prohibited. Although the Chinese government has promised media freedom for foreign journalists for 22 months, before, during, and after the Beijing Olympics, and ending on October 17, 2008, an FCCC [Foreign Correspondents Club in China] survey showed that 40 percent of foreign correspondents have experienced harassment, detention or an official warning during news gathering in Beijing and other areas. Some reporters have complained about repeated violent police interference at the time they were speaking with interviewees. Most seriously, Chinese interviewees usually become vulnerable as a result. In June 2006, Fu Xiancai was beaten and paralyzed after being interviewed by German media. In March 2007, Zheng Dajing was beaten and arrested after being interviewed by a British TV station.
Religious freedom is still under repression. In 2005, a Beijing pastor, Cai Zhuohua, was sentenced to three years for printing Bibles. Zhou Heng, a house church pastor in Xinjiang, was charged with running an "illegal operation" for receiving dozens of boxes of Bibles. From April to June 2007, China expelled over 100 suspected U.S., South Korean, Canadian, Australian, and other missionaries. Among them were humanitarian workers and language educators who had been teaching English in China for 15 years. During this so-called Typhoon 5 campaign, authorities took aim at missionary activities so as to prevent their recurrence during the Olympics.
On September 30, 2006, Chinese soldiers opened fire on 71 Tibetans who were escaping to Nepal. A 17-year-old nun died and a 20-year-old man was severely injured. Despite numerous international witnesses, the Chinese police insisted that the shooting was in self-defense. One year later, China tightened its control over Tibetan Buddhism. A September 1, 2007, regulation requires all reincarnated lamas to be approved by Chinese authorities, a requirement that flagrantly interferes with the tradition of reincarnation of living Buddhas as practiced in Tibet for thousands of years. In addition, Chinese authorities still ban the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet and a world-renowned pacifist, from returning to Tibet.
Since 1999, the government has banned many religious beliefs such as Falungong and the Three Servants. Their followers have experienced extremely cruel and planned persecutions. Many died from abuse, suffered torture, brainwashing, imprisonment and labor camp internment for persisting in their faith, possessing religious books, making DVDs and writing articles to expose the truth of the persecution.
China has the highest death penalty rate in the world. Execution statistics are treated as "state secrets." However, experts estimate that 8,000-10,000 people are sentenced to death in China every year, among them not only criminals and economic convicts, but totally innocent citizens, such as Nie Shubin, Teng Xingshan, Cao Haixin and Hugejiletu, whose innocence was proven only after they were already dead.
Another eight innocent farmers, Chen Guoqing, He Guoqiang, Yang Shiliang, Zhu Yanqiang, Huang Zhixiang, Fang Chunping, Cheng Fagen and Cheng Lihe, who confessed their "crimes" after being cruelly tortured by the police, have been sentenced to death and are currently held in prisons in Hebei [province] and in Jingdezhen [in Jiangxi province].
Torture is very common in China's detention centers, labor camps and prisons. Torture methods include electric shock, burning, use of electric needles, beating and hanging, sleep deprivation, forced chemical injection causing nerve damage, and piercing the fingers with needles. Every year, there are reported cases of Chinese citizens being disabled or killed by police torture.
Labor camps are still retained as a convenient Chinese system which allows the police to lock up citizens without trial for up to four years. The detention system is another practice that the police favor, freeing them to detain citizens for six months to two years. Dissidents and human rights activists are particularly vulnerable targets and are often sent to labor camps, detention centers or even mental hospitals by authorities who want to simplify legal procedures and mislead the media.
China has the world's largest secret police system, the Ministry of National Security (guo an) and the Internal Security Bureau (guo bao) of the Ministry of Public Security, which exercise power beyond the law. They can easily tap telephones, follow citizens, place them under house arrest, detain them and impose torture. On June 3, 2004, the Chinese secret police planted drugs on Chongqing dissident Xu Wanping and later sentenced him to 12 years' imprisonment for "subversion of state power."
Chinese citizens have no right to elect state leaders, local government officials or representatives. In fact, there has never been free exercise of election rights in township-level elections. Wuhan resident Sun Bu'er, a member of the banned political party the Pan-Blue Alliance, was brutally beaten in September 2006 for participating as an independent candidate during an election of county-level people's congress representatives. Mr. Sun disappeared on March 23, 2007.
China continues to cruelly discriminate against its rural population. According to the Chinese election law, a farmer's right to vote is worth one quarter of that of an urban resident. In June 2007, the Shanxi kiln scandal was exposed by the media. Thousands of 8- [to-]13[-]year-old trafficked children had been forced to labor in illegal kilns, almost all with local government connections. Many of the children were beaten, tortured and even buried alive.
The Chinese judiciary still illegally forbids any HIV/AIDS lawsuits against government officials responsible for the tragedy. AIDS sufferers and activists have been constantly harassed by the secret police.
The Chinese government has been selling arms and weapons to Darfur and other African regions to support ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The Chinese authorities have forcibly repatriated North Korean refugees, knowing that they would be sent to labor camps or executed once back home. This significantly contravenes China's accession to the "Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees" and the "Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees."
· Please be aware that the Olympic Games will be held in a country where there are no elections, no freedom of religion, no independent courts, no independent trade unions; where demonstrations and strikes are prohibited; where torture and discrimination are supported by a sophisticated system of secret police; where the government encourages the violation of human rights and dignity, and is not willing to undertake any of its international obligations.
· Please consider whether the Olympic Games should coexist with religious persecution[,] labor camps, modern slavery, identity discrimination, secret police and crimes against humanity.
As the Beijing Olympics slogan says, we live in "one world" with "one dream." We hope that one day the Chinese people will be able to share universal human rights, democracy and peace with people from all around the world. However, we can see that the Chinese government obviously is not yet prepared to honor its promise. As a matter of fact, the preparations for the Olympics have provided the perfect excuse for the Chinese government to restrict civil liberties and suppress human rights!
We do not want China to be contained or isolated from the rest of the world. We believe that only by adhering to the principles of human rights and through open dialogue can the world community pressure the Chinese government to change. Ignoring these realities and tolerating barbaric atrocities in [the] name of the Beijing Olympics will disgrace the Olympic Charter and shake the foundations of humanity. Human rights improvement requires time, but we should at least stop China's human rights situation from deteriorating. Having the Olympics hosted in a country where human dignity is trampled on will not honor its people or the Olympic Games.
We sincerely hope that the Olympic Games will bring the values of peace, equality, freedom and justice to 1.3 billion Chinese citizens. We pray that the Olympics will be held in a free China. We must push for the 2008 Olympics to live up to the Olympic Charter[,] and we must advocate for the realization of "one world" with "one human rights dream." We believe that only an Olympic Games true to the Olympic Charter can promote China's democratic progress, world peace and development.
We firmly hold to the belief that there can be no true Olympic Games without human rights and dignity. For China and for the Olympics, human rights must be upheld!
Fini
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
I found this article on the Washington Post today and I feel that it needs to be shared. While I may not agree with all the points the writers raise, I do feel that it should be read and debated openly.
I have copied this from the Washington Post website and without prior consent by either the authors or the newspaper, should anyone object to my posting please let me know and I will remove it. I am not the author of this work, and my only reason for posting this piece to increase the exposure of this article. The article, and the direct link to the Washington Post are listed below:
LINK: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/04/AR2008040402982_pf.html
Article
______________________________
The Real China and the Olympics
By Hu Jia and Teng Biao
Saturday, April 5, 2008; A15
This week, a Beijing court sentenced human rights activist Hu Jia to 3 1/2 years in prison for subverting state authority and to one additional year's loss of his "political rights." He was arrested in part for co-authoring, with Teng Biao, an open letter on human rights. Below, The Post printsHuman Rights Watch's translation of the Sept. 10, 2007, letter.
On July 13th 2001, when Beijing won the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games, the Chinese government promised the world it would improve China's human rights record. In June 2004, Beijing announced its Olympic Games slogan, "One World, One Dream." From their inception in 1896, the modern Olympic Games have always had as their mission the promotion of human dignity and world peace. China and the world expected to see the Olympic Games bring political progress to the country. Is Beijing keeping its promises? Is China improving its human rights record?
When you come to the Olympic Games in Beijing, you will see skyscrapers, spacious streets, modern stadiums and enthusiastic people. You will see the truth, but not the whole truth, just as you see only the tip of an iceberg. You may not know that the flowers, smiles, harmony and prosperity are built on a base of grievances, tears, imprisonment, torture and blood.
We are going to tell you the truth about China. We believe that for anyone who wishes to avoid a disgraceful Olympics, knowing the truth is the first step. Fang Zheng, an excellent athlete who holds two national records for the discus throw at China's Special Sport Games, has been deprived of the opportunity to participate in the 2008 Paralympics because he has become a living testimony to the June 4, 1989[,] massacre. That morning, in Tiananmen Square, his legs were crushed by a tank while he was rescuing a fellow student. In April 2007, the Ministry of Public Security issued an internal document secretly strengthening a political investigation which resulted in forbidding Olympics participation by 43 types of people from 11 different categories, including dissidents, human rights defenders, media workers, and religious participants. The Chinese police never made the document known to either the Chinese public or the international community.
Huge investment in Olympic projects and a total lack of transparency have facilitated serious corruption and widespread bribery. Taxpayers are not allowed to supervise the use of investment amounting to more than $40 billion. Liu Zhihua, formerly in charge of Olympic construction and former deputy mayor of Beijing, was arrested for massive embezzlement.
To clear space for Olympic-related construction, thousands of civilian houses have been destroyed without their former owners being properly compensated. Brothers Ye Guozhu and Ye Guoqiang were imprisoned for a legal appeal after their house was forcibly demolished. Ye Guozhu has been repeatedly handcuffed and shackled, tied to a bed and beaten with electric batons. During the countdown to the Olympic Games he will continue to suffer from torture in Chaobei Prison in Tianjin.
It has been reported that over 1.25 million people have been forced to move because of Olympic construction; it was estimated that the figure would reach 1.5 million by the end of 2007. No formal resettlement scheme is in place for the over 400,000 migrants who have had their dwelling places demolished. Twenty percent of the demolished households are expected to experience poverty or extreme poverty. In Qingdao, the Olympic sailing city, hundreds of households have been demolished and many human rights activists as well as "civilians" have been imprisoned. Similar stories come from other Olympic cities such as Shenyang, Shanghai and Qinhuangdao.
In order to establish the image of civilized cities, the government has intensified the ban against -- and detention and forced repatriation of -- petitioners, beggars and the homeless. Some of them have been kept in extended detention in so-called shelters or have even been sent directly to labor camps. Street vendors have suffered brutal confiscation of their goods by municipal agents. On July 20, 2005, Lin Hongying, a 56-year-old woman farmer and vegetable dealer, was beaten to death by city patrols in Jiangsu. On November 19, 2005, city patrols in Wuxi beat 54-year-old bicycle repairman Wu Shouqing to death. In January 2007, petitioner Duan Huimin was killed by Shanghai police. On July 1, 2007, Chen Xiaoming, a Shanghai petitioner and human rights activist, died of an untreated illness during a lengthy detention period. On August 5, 2007, right before the one-year Olympics countdown, 200 petitioners were arrested in Beijing.
China has consistently persecuted human rights activists, political dissidents and freelance writers and journalists. The blind activist Chen Guangcheng, recipient of the 2007 Ramon Magsaysay Award and named in 2006 by Time Magazine as one of the most influential 100 people shaping our world, is still serving his sentence of four years and three months for exposing the truth of forced abortion and sterilization. The government refused to give him the Braille books and the radio that his relatives and friends brought to Linyi prison in Shandong. Chen has been beaten while serving his sentence. On August 24, 2007, Chen's wife, Yuan Weijing, was kidnapped by police at the Beijing airport while waiting to fly to the Philippines to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award on behalf of her husband. On August 13, 2007, activist Yang Chunlin was arrested in Heilongjiang and charged with subversion of state power "for initiating the petition 'Human Rights before Olympics.' "
China still practices literary inquisition and holds the world record for detaining journalists and writers, as many as several hundred since 1989, according to incomplete statistics. As of this writing, 35 Chinese journalists and 51 writers are still in prison. Over 90 percent were arrested or tried after Beijing's successful bid for the Olympics in July 2001. For example, Shi Tao, a journalist and a poet, was sentenced to ten years in prison because of an e-mail sent to an overseas website. Dr. Xu Zerong, a scholar from Oxford University who researched the Korean War, was sentenced to 13 years' imprisonment for "illegally providing information abroad." Qingshuijun [Huang Jinqiu], a freelance writer, was sentenced to a 12-year term for his online publications. Some writers and dissidents are prohibited from going abroad; others from returning to China.
Every year in mainland China, countless websites are closed, blogs deleted, sensitive words filtered. Many websites hosted abroad are blocked. Overseas radio and television programs are interfered with or strictly prohibited. Although the Chinese government has promised media freedom for foreign journalists for 22 months, before, during, and after the Beijing Olympics, and ending on October 17, 2008, an FCCC [Foreign Correspondents Club in China] survey showed that 40 percent of foreign correspondents have experienced harassment, detention or an official warning during news gathering in Beijing and other areas. Some reporters have complained about repeated violent police interference at the time they were speaking with interviewees. Most seriously, Chinese interviewees usually become vulnerable as a result. In June 2006, Fu Xiancai was beaten and paralyzed after being interviewed by German media. In March 2007, Zheng Dajing was beaten and arrested after being interviewed by a British TV station.
Religious freedom is still under repression. In 2005, a Beijing pastor, Cai Zhuohua, was sentenced to three years for printing Bibles. Zhou Heng, a house church pastor in Xinjiang, was charged with running an "illegal operation" for receiving dozens of boxes of Bibles. From April to June 2007, China expelled over 100 suspected U.S., South Korean, Canadian, Australian, and other missionaries. Among them were humanitarian workers and language educators who had been teaching English in China for 15 years. During this so-called Typhoon 5 campaign, authorities took aim at missionary activities so as to prevent their recurrence during the Olympics.
On September 30, 2006, Chinese soldiers opened fire on 71 Tibetans who were escaping to Nepal. A 17-year-old nun died and a 20-year-old man was severely injured. Despite numerous international witnesses, the Chinese police insisted that the shooting was in self-defense. One year later, China tightened its control over Tibetan Buddhism. A September 1, 2007, regulation requires all reincarnated lamas to be approved by Chinese authorities, a requirement that flagrantly interferes with the tradition of reincarnation of living Buddhas as practiced in Tibet for thousands of years. In addition, Chinese authorities still ban the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet and a world-renowned pacifist, from returning to Tibet.
Since 1999, the government has banned many religious beliefs such as Falungong and the Three Servants. Their followers have experienced extremely cruel and planned persecutions. Many died from abuse, suffered torture, brainwashing, imprisonment and labor camp internment for persisting in their faith, possessing religious books, making DVDs and writing articles to expose the truth of the persecution.
China has the highest death penalty rate in the world. Execution statistics are treated as "state secrets." However, experts estimate that 8,000-10,000 people are sentenced to death in China every year, among them not only criminals and economic convicts, but totally innocent citizens, such as Nie Shubin, Teng Xingshan, Cao Haixin and Hugejiletu, whose innocence was proven only after they were already dead.
Another eight innocent farmers, Chen Guoqing, He Guoqiang, Yang Shiliang, Zhu Yanqiang, Huang Zhixiang, Fang Chunping, Cheng Fagen and Cheng Lihe, who confessed their "crimes" after being cruelly tortured by the police, have been sentenced to death and are currently held in prisons in Hebei [province] and in Jingdezhen [in Jiangxi province].
Torture is very common in China's detention centers, labor camps and prisons. Torture methods include electric shock, burning, use of electric needles, beating and hanging, sleep deprivation, forced chemical injection causing nerve damage, and piercing the fingers with needles. Every year, there are reported cases of Chinese citizens being disabled or killed by police torture.
Labor camps are still retained as a convenient Chinese system which allows the police to lock up citizens without trial for up to four years. The detention system is another practice that the police favor, freeing them to detain citizens for six months to two years. Dissidents and human rights activists are particularly vulnerable targets and are often sent to labor camps, detention centers or even mental hospitals by authorities who want to simplify legal procedures and mislead the media.
China has the world's largest secret police system, the Ministry of National Security (guo an) and the Internal Security Bureau (guo bao) of the Ministry of Public Security, which exercise power beyond the law. They can easily tap telephones, follow citizens, place them under house arrest, detain them and impose torture. On June 3, 2004, the Chinese secret police planted drugs on Chongqing dissident Xu Wanping and later sentenced him to 12 years' imprisonment for "subversion of state power."
Chinese citizens have no right to elect state leaders, local government officials or representatives. In fact, there has never been free exercise of election rights in township-level elections. Wuhan resident Sun Bu'er, a member of the banned political party the Pan-Blue Alliance, was brutally beaten in September 2006 for participating as an independent candidate during an election of county-level people's congress representatives. Mr. Sun disappeared on March 23, 2007.
China continues to cruelly discriminate against its rural population. According to the Chinese election law, a farmer's right to vote is worth one quarter of that of an urban resident. In June 2007, the Shanxi kiln scandal was exposed by the media. Thousands of 8- [to-]13[-]year-old trafficked children had been forced to labor in illegal kilns, almost all with local government connections. Many of the children were beaten, tortured and even buried alive.
The Chinese judiciary still illegally forbids any HIV/AIDS lawsuits against government officials responsible for the tragedy. AIDS sufferers and activists have been constantly harassed by the secret police.
The Chinese government has been selling arms and weapons to Darfur and other African regions to support ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The Chinese authorities have forcibly repatriated North Korean refugees, knowing that they would be sent to labor camps or executed once back home. This significantly contravenes China's accession to the "Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees" and the "Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees."
· Please be aware that the Olympic Games will be held in a country where there are no elections, no freedom of religion, no independent courts, no independent trade unions; where demonstrations and strikes are prohibited; where torture and discrimination are supported by a sophisticated system of secret police; where the government encourages the violation of human rights and dignity, and is not willing to undertake any of its international obligations.
· Please consider whether the Olympic Games should coexist with religious persecution[,] labor camps, modern slavery, identity discrimination, secret police and crimes against humanity.
As the Beijing Olympics slogan says, we live in "one world" with "one dream." We hope that one day the Chinese people will be able to share universal human rights, democracy and peace with people from all around the world. However, we can see that the Chinese government obviously is not yet prepared to honor its promise. As a matter of fact, the preparations for the Olympics have provided the perfect excuse for the Chinese government to restrict civil liberties and suppress human rights!
We do not want China to be contained or isolated from the rest of the world. We believe that only by adhering to the principles of human rights and through open dialogue can the world community pressure the Chinese government to change. Ignoring these realities and tolerating barbaric atrocities in [the] name of the Beijing Olympics will disgrace the Olympic Charter and shake the foundations of humanity. Human rights improvement requires time, but we should at least stop China's human rights situation from deteriorating. Having the Olympics hosted in a country where human dignity is trampled on will not honor its people or the Olympic Games.
We sincerely hope that the Olympic Games will bring the values of peace, equality, freedom and justice to 1.3 billion Chinese citizens. We pray that the Olympics will be held in a free China. We must push for the 2008 Olympics to live up to the Olympic Charter[,] and we must advocate for the realization of "one world" with "one human rights dream." We believe that only an Olympic Games true to the Olympic Charter can promote China's democratic progress, world peace and development.
We firmly hold to the belief that there can be no true Olympic Games without human rights and dignity. For China and for the Olympics, human rights must be upheld!
Fini
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Ryan Pyle Blog: A Marked Man?
Hello,
Well, two blogs about Tibet in a week and now my internet problems have worsened severely. I am not getting emails people are sending me and I sent two emails yesterday that were never received.
My gmail has almost stopped working all together and my website access has reached entirely new levels of slow-ness. Could I have gone to bed in Shanghai and woken up in remote Africa? No, I don't think so. I am still in Shanghai in my western style apartment complex watching my pictures upload at 4 kb/s.
I read an article in the Economist a few weeks ago were some people believe that pollution costs about 4-8% GDP in China per year. Meaning that China's pollution and their complete lack to do anything about it costs hundreds of millions of dollars a year, or whatever 4-8% of total country GDP happens to equal.
I would love to see a statistic about how much percentage of GDP it costs to keep the internet running at a snails pace. I know it would be much less than the environment, and I don't for a minute feel that slow internet access is more important than China's growing environmental problems. But wouldn't it be great if someone could quantify China's strangle hold on the internet?
While it's true that the government un-blocked the BBC last week, and it's been very exciting to catch up on my football scores as the Champion's league heads in to its Semi-Finals, but there is so much more blocked and in fact the access seems to be generally slower than it was a year ago.
A friend of mine and I were discussing last night, there is no country in the world more paranoid of free thought than China. The government blocks websites to protect its people from dangerous internet content, and that may have flown 5 or 10 years ago when China was in it's infancy stage of internet communications, but these days are different. China is in fact leading the world in broadband subscriptions and internet users, don't you think these 300 or 400 million people can decide what is good and bad for themselves?
How many jobs are created by trying to police the internet? A New York Times article from 2006 indicated that there are over 100,000 people with government jobs in various ministries controlling and watching the internet. That sounds like an absurd amount of people who are essentially wasting everyone's time.
I was in the Hong Kong airport last week, returning from the Philippines for work, and I had a two hour wait for my next flight back to Shanghai. So I bought a coffee, popped open my laptop and uploaded more pictures in 90 minutes than I can upload in 2 days at home - and this is while sitting in the airport between flights in Hong Kong using their FREE broadband connection. It's good to know some countries can get things right.
If someone wanted to ask me how much of my personal income potential is sacrificed each year because of slow uploading time or having me have to sit in front of my computer and watch each FTP so that it doesn't click off; I wouldn't hesitate. I would easily say 7-10%. Meaning that slow internet access in China effects my personal business, and at least 7-10% of my working hours or efficiently is disrupted by 3rd world internet dial up speeds in what is supposed to be the Paris of the East, the new Tokyo, the next Hong Kong................or as I like to say, my slow slow Shanghai.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Well, two blogs about Tibet in a week and now my internet problems have worsened severely. I am not getting emails people are sending me and I sent two emails yesterday that were never received.
My gmail has almost stopped working all together and my website access has reached entirely new levels of slow-ness. Could I have gone to bed in Shanghai and woken up in remote Africa? No, I don't think so. I am still in Shanghai in my western style apartment complex watching my pictures upload at 4 kb/s.
I read an article in the Economist a few weeks ago were some people believe that pollution costs about 4-8% GDP in China per year. Meaning that China's pollution and their complete lack to do anything about it costs hundreds of millions of dollars a year, or whatever 4-8% of total country GDP happens to equal.
I would love to see a statistic about how much percentage of GDP it costs to keep the internet running at a snails pace. I know it would be much less than the environment, and I don't for a minute feel that slow internet access is more important than China's growing environmental problems. But wouldn't it be great if someone could quantify China's strangle hold on the internet?
While it's true that the government un-blocked the BBC last week, and it's been very exciting to catch up on my football scores as the Champion's league heads in to its Semi-Finals, but there is so much more blocked and in fact the access seems to be generally slower than it was a year ago.
A friend of mine and I were discussing last night, there is no country in the world more paranoid of free thought than China. The government blocks websites to protect its people from dangerous internet content, and that may have flown 5 or 10 years ago when China was in it's infancy stage of internet communications, but these days are different. China is in fact leading the world in broadband subscriptions and internet users, don't you think these 300 or 400 million people can decide what is good and bad for themselves?
How many jobs are created by trying to police the internet? A New York Times article from 2006 indicated that there are over 100,000 people with government jobs in various ministries controlling and watching the internet. That sounds like an absurd amount of people who are essentially wasting everyone's time.
I was in the Hong Kong airport last week, returning from the Philippines for work, and I had a two hour wait for my next flight back to Shanghai. So I bought a coffee, popped open my laptop and uploaded more pictures in 90 minutes than I can upload in 2 days at home - and this is while sitting in the airport between flights in Hong Kong using their FREE broadband connection. It's good to know some countries can get things right.
If someone wanted to ask me how much of my personal income potential is sacrificed each year because of slow uploading time or having me have to sit in front of my computer and watch each FTP so that it doesn't click off; I wouldn't hesitate. I would easily say 7-10%. Meaning that slow internet access in China effects my personal business, and at least 7-10% of my working hours or efficiently is disrupted by 3rd world internet dial up speeds in what is supposed to be the Paris of the East, the new Tokyo, the next Hong Kong................or as I like to say, my slow slow Shanghai.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Ryan Pyle Blog: Exhibition: Chinese Turkistan
Hello,
For many of you, coming to Toronto to see my exhibition on Chinese Turkistan was simply impossible. So I have prepared a link with the images so that you can view. Enjoy.
IMAGES LINK: http://archive.ryanpyle.com/my/glbs.aspx?msid=2223&lid=15392186&e=0&p=0
Brief:
Ryan Pyle has been visiting China's western Xinjiang province regularly since 2001. But it wasn't until a recent trip in 2006 that he decided to begin to focus his camera on this mysterious and remote part of the world.
Formerly known as Chinese Turkistan, this vast expanse of deserts and mountains has seemingly always been at a crossroads between cultures and time. For centuries criminals, holy men, and traders tramped across the region; and it was out of this tradition that the silk road was established.
Surrounded on three sides by some of the highest mountain ranges in the world, with the Gobi desert blocking the fourth, Chinese Turkistan is one of the most isolated places on earth.
Ryan, in his project, has begun to look at life in this region. Drawn by its abundance of life, colorful minorities, harsh landscapes and Islam; Ryan visits mosques, local herdsmen, farming communities and former silk road trading posts trying to capture what he feels is a culture under threat from China's breakneck growth in the region.
"The culture is vanishing before my eyes", Ryan says, "each time I return something is missing: a market, an old shop full of blacksmiths, a local mosque." Traveling only with a Uygur translator, Ryan feels that the importance of capturing this culture is paramount because it is disappearing. "No other country in the world is knocking down old buildings faster to make way for new hotels, highways and airports than China. A few more years and there might not be much left at all; the whole country, from Beijing to Kashgar, is starting to look the same. A pity really, the cultural diversity being lost is not something that can be faked, or easily brought back. This cultural fabric will be lost forever."
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
For many of you, coming to Toronto to see my exhibition on Chinese Turkistan was simply impossible. So I have prepared a link with the images so that you can view. Enjoy.
IMAGES LINK: http://archive.ryanpyle.com/my/glbs.aspx?msid=2223&lid=15392186&e=0&p=0
Brief:
Ryan Pyle has been visiting China's western Xinjiang province regularly since 2001. But it wasn't until a recent trip in 2006 that he decided to begin to focus his camera on this mysterious and remote part of the world.
Formerly known as Chinese Turkistan, this vast expanse of deserts and mountains has seemingly always been at a crossroads between cultures and time. For centuries criminals, holy men, and traders tramped across the region; and it was out of this tradition that the silk road was established.
Surrounded on three sides by some of the highest mountain ranges in the world, with the Gobi desert blocking the fourth, Chinese Turkistan is one of the most isolated places on earth.
Ryan, in his project, has begun to look at life in this region. Drawn by its abundance of life, colorful minorities, harsh landscapes and Islam; Ryan visits mosques, local herdsmen, farming communities and former silk road trading posts trying to capture what he feels is a culture under threat from China's breakneck growth in the region.
"The culture is vanishing before my eyes", Ryan says, "each time I return something is missing: a market, an old shop full of blacksmiths, a local mosque." Traveling only with a Uygur translator, Ryan feels that the importance of capturing this culture is paramount because it is disappearing. "No other country in the world is knocking down old buildings faster to make way for new hotels, highways and airports than China. A few more years and there might not be much left at all; the whole country, from Beijing to Kashgar, is starting to look the same. A pity really, the cultural diversity being lost is not something that can be faked, or easily brought back. This cultural fabric will be lost forever."
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Ryan Pyle Blog: Tibet: Two Misconceptions
Hello,
When trying to understand the differences in the media coverage of Tibet between Western countries and China, I think it's important that we keep one thing in mind; that is that the average Chinese and average western observer might not have any real idea about what they are talking about at all. Let me explain further.
Obviously the Chinese media is biased. They rarely report anything objectively and they constantly try to spin things to benefit their means. The recent violence in Tibet is no exception. Coverage both on television and in the papers has reached new levels of laugh-ability and is generally a disgrace to the profession in general. Now in saying that, the western coverage has been surprisingly horrid. While the big players have all done well in documenting the events, pictures have been shown in secondary newspapers across Europe and North America of riots and protests of Tibetans in India and Nepal, with captions indicating that they are taking place in Lhasa. Shocking I know. In general the western media has always been sympathetic, to a fault, of Tibet. While it is true that China has taken the territory by force and ran it with little or no recognition for its original inhabitants, fire bombing innocent Chinese business men and shop keepers is not the way out of this mess. But, let me get back to my original point about misconceptions.
The Western Misconception
There has been a rash of blog posting in the last week or so by Chinese bloggers condemning the actions of Tibetan rioters against Chinese people in Tibet. And I must agree, fire bombs being throne in to Chinese stores and incredible levels of violence against innocent Chinese citizens and small business owners are completely unacceptable. Clearly the grievances of the Tibetan people lay with the government which marginalizes them as second class citizens and forces them to repress their religious beliefs; so attacks on ordinary Chinese folks just seems a bit over the top. Which leads me to my first point, Tibetans are violent people and they are hard as nails, so to speak. There is a common misconception in the west that all Tibetan people are buddhist and they are peaceful and would never hurt anyone or anything. And while that is a fairly reliable description of monks and people over 60 years old in Tibet, clearly there are many Tibetans who are not monks and there are many who are young and passionate about their culture. Tibetan people have a strong and proud tradition as hunters, nomads and farmers, and only recently as city dwellers. It has been my experience, traveling in the region for the last seven years, that no matter what the background of tradition, Tibetans can be down right nasty both to each other and to anyone who happens to get in their way.
Violence has been as big a part of Tibetan culture as Buddhism has been over the last thousand years or so, but it is almost never discussed or debated. In fact, in the 10th century, a warlike Tibetan nation was one of the great imperial powers of Asia with their armies stretched deep in to Central Asia, Central India and Western China. More recently Tibet had always been, prior to the 1950s, been a vast lawless frontier where anything went, and there was much tribal warfare within Tibetan clans competing for farming land, live stock and even women. Nomads within Tibet have had, going back to the days of the Silk Road, always been feared for their ruthless banditry, robbing caravans of merchants crossing from Mongolia to Chinese Turkistan who accidently ventured to closely to Tibet's northern frontier.
Buddhism arrived in Tibet in the middle of the 7th century and although it spread slowly over the next few hundred years the religions spread seemed to calm the Tibetan warlike ambition, but large cliques and groups continued their ways of violence. Understanding the Tibetan forms of punishment may help us understand the levels of violence that were once deemed acceptable. In 1929, in his book THE LAND OF THE LAMAS David McDonald witnesses mutilation as a form of punishment for crimes. Men who had committed certain crimes had red hot irons thrust in to their eye sockets, and some had boiling water poured over their eyes; this was a typical punishment for murder or theft from monasteries.
While writers and journalists of our era often have experiences, and myself is included in this group, of the humorous, hospitable and trustworthy Tibetans; this is not the only side of the Tibetan people and like all of us in the west and within China, we all have our nasty sides. Especially when being continuously pressured and belittled.
The Chinese Misconception:
While the first misconception is from outsiders looking in, the second misconception is from Chinese people within China. It is safe to say that the average Chinese person has little or no idea of the history of Tibetan culture and the historically brutal treatment that the Tibetans have received at the hands of the Chinese over the last 60 years. Chinese propaganda and the re-writing of history reigns supreme and many bloggers have only vague ideas of the true history between Tibet and China, and the activities of the Cultural Revolution. While 60 years of intimidation and suppression are still no excuses to take the lives of innocent shop keepers, it can lend value to understanding just how desperate the Tibetans feel, and how serious this problem will become if not dealt with effectively.
Much of the understanding in China about Tibet comes from a "version" history I described above. Most Chinese are taught in schools that Tibetans are culture-less nomads, barbarians who have rapped and pillaged for centuries. This type of thought control allows Chinese to feel superior to their minority peoples and therefore gives them a "moral green light" - so to speak - in running the territories they live in. The comment in my last blog about Tibet is a prime example of this mis-education, whereby the current party secretary in Tibet referred to Tibetan people as children and mentioned that the Communist Party was the Tibetan people's real Buddha. A whole new level of sickness, but in his mind he is completely justified because he has been taught since he was a child that Tibetans are less than human, or at least less than a Han Chinese.
Had Chinese people had un-biased books to read from and a less-slanted post secondary education, they may understand that their government has made some unforgivable mistakes over the last 60 years in Tibet; but my hope is that all of that will be pushed to the past and a new reconciliation will begin. Now is the time, dialog is the only way to end this suppression and the negative media attention it attracts. And while this is my hope, this will most certainly not become reality.
The Chinese government will do what it does best: suppress, suppress, suppress. They will blame the Dali Lama because that's all they really know how to do. Imagine if they preformed an internal investigation into their own policy in Tibet, and then made changes?
It'll never happen, blaming is easier and a clear sign of guilt and ignorance. Economic growth and emerging global power has fueled Chinese Nationalism to ever dangerous levels, arrogance and self-ritiousness is visible throughout all levels of government and society; for too many there is little reason for change. And so minorities continue to suffer.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
When trying to understand the differences in the media coverage of Tibet between Western countries and China, I think it's important that we keep one thing in mind; that is that the average Chinese and average western observer might not have any real idea about what they are talking about at all. Let me explain further.
Obviously the Chinese media is biased. They rarely report anything objectively and they constantly try to spin things to benefit their means. The recent violence in Tibet is no exception. Coverage both on television and in the papers has reached new levels of laugh-ability and is generally a disgrace to the profession in general. Now in saying that, the western coverage has been surprisingly horrid. While the big players have all done well in documenting the events, pictures have been shown in secondary newspapers across Europe and North America of riots and protests of Tibetans in India and Nepal, with captions indicating that they are taking place in Lhasa. Shocking I know. In general the western media has always been sympathetic, to a fault, of Tibet. While it is true that China has taken the territory by force and ran it with little or no recognition for its original inhabitants, fire bombing innocent Chinese business men and shop keepers is not the way out of this mess. But, let me get back to my original point about misconceptions.
The Western Misconception
There has been a rash of blog posting in the last week or so by Chinese bloggers condemning the actions of Tibetan rioters against Chinese people in Tibet. And I must agree, fire bombs being throne in to Chinese stores and incredible levels of violence against innocent Chinese citizens and small business owners are completely unacceptable. Clearly the grievances of the Tibetan people lay with the government which marginalizes them as second class citizens and forces them to repress their religious beliefs; so attacks on ordinary Chinese folks just seems a bit over the top. Which leads me to my first point, Tibetans are violent people and they are hard as nails, so to speak. There is a common misconception in the west that all Tibetan people are buddhist and they are peaceful and would never hurt anyone or anything. And while that is a fairly reliable description of monks and people over 60 years old in Tibet, clearly there are many Tibetans who are not monks and there are many who are young and passionate about their culture. Tibetan people have a strong and proud tradition as hunters, nomads and farmers, and only recently as city dwellers. It has been my experience, traveling in the region for the last seven years, that no matter what the background of tradition, Tibetans can be down right nasty both to each other and to anyone who happens to get in their way.
Violence has been as big a part of Tibetan culture as Buddhism has been over the last thousand years or so, but it is almost never discussed or debated. In fact, in the 10th century, a warlike Tibetan nation was one of the great imperial powers of Asia with their armies stretched deep in to Central Asia, Central India and Western China. More recently Tibet had always been, prior to the 1950s, been a vast lawless frontier where anything went, and there was much tribal warfare within Tibetan clans competing for farming land, live stock and even women. Nomads within Tibet have had, going back to the days of the Silk Road, always been feared for their ruthless banditry, robbing caravans of merchants crossing from Mongolia to Chinese Turkistan who accidently ventured to closely to Tibet's northern frontier.
Buddhism arrived in Tibet in the middle of the 7th century and although it spread slowly over the next few hundred years the religions spread seemed to calm the Tibetan warlike ambition, but large cliques and groups continued their ways of violence. Understanding the Tibetan forms of punishment may help us understand the levels of violence that were once deemed acceptable. In 1929, in his book THE LAND OF THE LAMAS David McDonald witnesses mutilation as a form of punishment for crimes. Men who had committed certain crimes had red hot irons thrust in to their eye sockets, and some had boiling water poured over their eyes; this was a typical punishment for murder or theft from monasteries.
While writers and journalists of our era often have experiences, and myself is included in this group, of the humorous, hospitable and trustworthy Tibetans; this is not the only side of the Tibetan people and like all of us in the west and within China, we all have our nasty sides. Especially when being continuously pressured and belittled.
The Chinese Misconception:
While the first misconception is from outsiders looking in, the second misconception is from Chinese people within China. It is safe to say that the average Chinese person has little or no idea of the history of Tibetan culture and the historically brutal treatment that the Tibetans have received at the hands of the Chinese over the last 60 years. Chinese propaganda and the re-writing of history reigns supreme and many bloggers have only vague ideas of the true history between Tibet and China, and the activities of the Cultural Revolution. While 60 years of intimidation and suppression are still no excuses to take the lives of innocent shop keepers, it can lend value to understanding just how desperate the Tibetans feel, and how serious this problem will become if not dealt with effectively.
Much of the understanding in China about Tibet comes from a "version" history I described above. Most Chinese are taught in schools that Tibetans are culture-less nomads, barbarians who have rapped and pillaged for centuries. This type of thought control allows Chinese to feel superior to their minority peoples and therefore gives them a "moral green light" - so to speak - in running the territories they live in. The comment in my last blog about Tibet is a prime example of this mis-education, whereby the current party secretary in Tibet referred to Tibetan people as children and mentioned that the Communist Party was the Tibetan people's real Buddha. A whole new level of sickness, but in his mind he is completely justified because he has been taught since he was a child that Tibetans are less than human, or at least less than a Han Chinese.
Had Chinese people had un-biased books to read from and a less-slanted post secondary education, they may understand that their government has made some unforgivable mistakes over the last 60 years in Tibet; but my hope is that all of that will be pushed to the past and a new reconciliation will begin. Now is the time, dialog is the only way to end this suppression and the negative media attention it attracts. And while this is my hope, this will most certainly not become reality.
The Chinese government will do what it does best: suppress, suppress, suppress. They will blame the Dali Lama because that's all they really know how to do. Imagine if they preformed an internal investigation into their own policy in Tibet, and then made changes?
It'll never happen, blaming is easier and a clear sign of guilt and ignorance. Economic growth and emerging global power has fueled Chinese Nationalism to ever dangerous levels, arrogance and self-ritiousness is visible throughout all levels of government and society; for too many there is little reason for change. And so minorities continue to suffer.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Ryan Pyle Blog: The Policy Failure of Tibet
Hello,
As someone who has traveled dozens of times in Tibet, and who has spent countless hours sitting in monasteries and documenting life in this part of the world; I find it necessary to share my opinion on the recent brutal crackdown on Tibetan protests by the police and military in the provinces of Tibet, Sichuan, Gansu, Yunnan and Qinghai.
The title of this blog is: "The Policy Failure of Tibet", because since 1949 every single policy that the Chinese government has come up with has failed, and failed miserably.
The mainly Chinese view that the Tibetan people should be thankful for the wealth and prosperity that the Han Chinese have brought to the region of Tibet is largely bunk. The wealth that the Han Chinese have brought to Tibet has largely benefited not Tibetans, but themselves. They've built schools for their own children and hospitals that few locals can afford, and when Tibetans are admitted it is generally ceremonial or an act of charity. The roads and infrastructure build up has largely benefited the commodities industry which the Tibetans are shut out of, and for each train that reaches Tibet from mainland China full of tourists; another two or three trains go back in the other direction full of coal, iron ore and copper.
It's true, Tibet is incredibly strategic to China. It makes up about 15% of China's overall land mass and borders Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal and Burma. The region of Tibet offers a convenient buffer between the mainland and previous threat of India, and above all this the Himalayan kingdom is said to contain abundant mineral wealth. It makes very clear sense, looking back, why China wanted to incorporate it in the People's Republic of China in the 1950s. But the historical record of how China has done in the almost 60 years of "managing" Tibet offers little comfort - one can't help but feel that these recent moments of unrest have been a long long time coming. Below are a few examples of policy failure:
Almost immediately after claiming power in 1949 the People's Republic of China and its governing leaders decided to shrink the new "province" of Tibet. The leadership collectively gerrymandered the territory much like an electoral district in the United States of America. The resulting territory is half of its original size, resulting in a fact that many Tibetans now living in China live outside of Tibet proper; which is one reason why we've seen protests in many of the neighboring provinces - Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan.
Once Tibet was settled in the late 1950s and early 1960s the Chinese began an official assimilation policy, tempting Chinese from eastern China to move to Lhasa and set up business; in an grand effort to make Tibetans a minority in their own territory and therefore more stable. The policy eventually worked marvelously and Tibetans are now in fact a minority in their own territory and anyone who has visited Lhasa in the last year or two will be completely put off by the "new Tibet", while roads are paved much of the central planning has lead to Lhasa looking like every other city in China, with ugly white "bathroom" tile buildings and honking motorists on every corner. On a recent visit to Lhasa my taxi driver from the airport to the city center was a man from Hunan province. He had come to Lhasa a few years back because taxi companies paid a premium for drivers in Tibet - upwards of 150% what they can make in their home province. So he came, he drove, and he doesn't like it much. He mentioned the food had no taste, the air was too dry and that Tibetans didn't like him. Why stay I asked, to save up a little more money and then go home he replied. His tail is telling and common of most who move to Tibet from the east. Most don't like it, most come just for the money and most make no attempt to integrate in to local life, leaving a great barrier between the two cultures that exist side by side. The larger the Han population in Lhasa, the more the tensions increased. Han took care of Han and gave the best jobs to each other, leaving the mostly un-educated Tibetan population out of their plans for a new Tibet. Assimilation policies generally make the original inhabitants second class citizens in their own homes, clearly leaving them resentful and feeling helpless. This has essentially been the case since real development began in Tibet during the 1990s.
When things became too dangerous for the Dali Lama he had to flee Tibet in 1959, taking refuge in India. It was a disastrous event for the people of Tibet. While its true that the Dali Lama's life was most likely endanger it marked the beginning of a full out assault on Tibetan Buddhism. In the years that followed the Cultural Revolution shut down or destroyed some 6000 or more monasteries. A culture that had existed untouched for centuries was beset by systematic program of complete destruction. One monk I recently interviewed in the Labrang monastery told me that the Cultural Revolution was a horrible time, and he reminisces, anytime he kneeled on the ground to perform prostration's he would be wiped or beaten. Those, he said, were times best forgotten.
Since the "Opening and Reform Period" was ushered in by Deng Xiaoping in 1979, much Chinese history has been conveniently re-written or erased. The government's bureau of education has willing done it's "Big Brother Best" to conveniently forget much of the atrocity that has ravaged within the country for much of the last half century. While the disastrous policies of the Great Leap Forward and the starvation that followed are erased from history; much of Tibets history has been altered to suit the cause of government. Ask the average Chinese person in their 20s on the streets of major cities of China what they learned about Tibet during their education and they'll look dumbfounded. Stories of savages and unsophisticated barbarians come to mind, that is before the region was "liberated" by the People Liberation Army. The Chinese government has much avoided the topic of policies that were implemented in Han China during the Cultural Revolution, but they have pleaded complete amnesia to policies that were implemented in minority regions like Xinijang and Tibet during the same time frame - because they were often far far worse than anything that happened in the east. Based on my travels many monks still live with memories of the Cultural Revolution and wounds that have never been brought in to the open, or in fact have swept under the carpet as if they never happened, and that only leaves a deeper resentment. Some of which has boiled over this week.
With all the assimilation, immigration and business buildup in Tibet it is hard for Tibetans not to feel like second class citizens in their own homes. Now this has happened countless times throughout history to parts of the world that have been invaded and colonized; the British in India, Europeans in North and South America for example. But this is somewhat different in that today we live in a world of fixed territorial boundaries and issues of national security that reign supreme; a much different world that when the British governed Pakistan and India. In today's world the buzz word of stability, or the impression of stability, reigns supreme in many developing countries in the world today; and China is perhaps the perfect example. It's booming economy and upcoming Olympic games means that there is a lot to lose, and media attention is getting fierce, the impression of stability is of the utmost importance. But you can only keep people down for so long, and this quote by Zhang Qingli, the Communist Party Leader of Tibet, the highest ranking official in the territory, seem to speak volumes of the dissatisfaction by Tibetans of Han rule. Zhang says in an interview last year, "The Communist Party is like the parent to the Tibetan people, and it is always considerate about what the children need. He later added: "The Central Party Committee is the real Buddha for Tibetans." What more can I say, when top government officials put their foot in their own mouths this well!
To be honest, I had hope for Tibet under Chinese rule up until a few weeks ago. China's current president Hu Jinatao was the Party Leader of Tibet from 1988 and had experienced, and was generally responsible for the, crack down in 1989. My hope was that he had learned his lessons and might have been able to avoid similar situations, but it's clear that the current party chief is stuck in the 1960s mentality of governing Tibet. The future looks bleak indeed: wrong thinking ministers, trigger happy soldiers and a complete blockade against independent observers and journalists are all steps in the wrong direction. When will China learn that this behavior just doesn't fly when you view yourself as an emerging superpower? Maybe never. Will further gaps in stability plague China in its minority hinterlands? Only time will tell. But my guess is this will be the most political Olympics on record and China will weather each storm with heavy-handed crackdowns, prompting further resentment. And so the vicious circle continues.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
As someone who has traveled dozens of times in Tibet, and who has spent countless hours sitting in monasteries and documenting life in this part of the world; I find it necessary to share my opinion on the recent brutal crackdown on Tibetan protests by the police and military in the provinces of Tibet, Sichuan, Gansu, Yunnan and Qinghai.
The title of this blog is: "The Policy Failure of Tibet", because since 1949 every single policy that the Chinese government has come up with has failed, and failed miserably.
The mainly Chinese view that the Tibetan people should be thankful for the wealth and prosperity that the Han Chinese have brought to the region of Tibet is largely bunk. The wealth that the Han Chinese have brought to Tibet has largely benefited not Tibetans, but themselves. They've built schools for their own children and hospitals that few locals can afford, and when Tibetans are admitted it is generally ceremonial or an act of charity. The roads and infrastructure build up has largely benefited the commodities industry which the Tibetans are shut out of, and for each train that reaches Tibet from mainland China full of tourists; another two or three trains go back in the other direction full of coal, iron ore and copper.
It's true, Tibet is incredibly strategic to China. It makes up about 15% of China's overall land mass and borders Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal and Burma. The region of Tibet offers a convenient buffer between the mainland and previous threat of India, and above all this the Himalayan kingdom is said to contain abundant mineral wealth. It makes very clear sense, looking back, why China wanted to incorporate it in the People's Republic of China in the 1950s. But the historical record of how China has done in the almost 60 years of "managing" Tibet offers little comfort - one can't help but feel that these recent moments of unrest have been a long long time coming. Below are a few examples of policy failure:
Almost immediately after claiming power in 1949 the People's Republic of China and its governing leaders decided to shrink the new "province" of Tibet. The leadership collectively gerrymandered the territory much like an electoral district in the United States of America. The resulting territory is half of its original size, resulting in a fact that many Tibetans now living in China live outside of Tibet proper; which is one reason why we've seen protests in many of the neighboring provinces - Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan.
Once Tibet was settled in the late 1950s and early 1960s the Chinese began an official assimilation policy, tempting Chinese from eastern China to move to Lhasa and set up business; in an grand effort to make Tibetans a minority in their own territory and therefore more stable. The policy eventually worked marvelously and Tibetans are now in fact a minority in their own territory and anyone who has visited Lhasa in the last year or two will be completely put off by the "new Tibet", while roads are paved much of the central planning has lead to Lhasa looking like every other city in China, with ugly white "bathroom" tile buildings and honking motorists on every corner. On a recent visit to Lhasa my taxi driver from the airport to the city center was a man from Hunan province. He had come to Lhasa a few years back because taxi companies paid a premium for drivers in Tibet - upwards of 150% what they can make in their home province. So he came, he drove, and he doesn't like it much. He mentioned the food had no taste, the air was too dry and that Tibetans didn't like him. Why stay I asked, to save up a little more money and then go home he replied. His tail is telling and common of most who move to Tibet from the east. Most don't like it, most come just for the money and most make no attempt to integrate in to local life, leaving a great barrier between the two cultures that exist side by side. The larger the Han population in Lhasa, the more the tensions increased. Han took care of Han and gave the best jobs to each other, leaving the mostly un-educated Tibetan population out of their plans for a new Tibet. Assimilation policies generally make the original inhabitants second class citizens in their own homes, clearly leaving them resentful and feeling helpless. This has essentially been the case since real development began in Tibet during the 1990s.
When things became too dangerous for the Dali Lama he had to flee Tibet in 1959, taking refuge in India. It was a disastrous event for the people of Tibet. While its true that the Dali Lama's life was most likely endanger it marked the beginning of a full out assault on Tibetan Buddhism. In the years that followed the Cultural Revolution shut down or destroyed some 6000 or more monasteries. A culture that had existed untouched for centuries was beset by systematic program of complete destruction. One monk I recently interviewed in the Labrang monastery told me that the Cultural Revolution was a horrible time, and he reminisces, anytime he kneeled on the ground to perform prostration's he would be wiped or beaten. Those, he said, were times best forgotten.
Since the "Opening and Reform Period" was ushered in by Deng Xiaoping in 1979, much Chinese history has been conveniently re-written or erased. The government's bureau of education has willing done it's "Big Brother Best" to conveniently forget much of the atrocity that has ravaged within the country for much of the last half century. While the disastrous policies of the Great Leap Forward and the starvation that followed are erased from history; much of Tibets history has been altered to suit the cause of government. Ask the average Chinese person in their 20s on the streets of major cities of China what they learned about Tibet during their education and they'll look dumbfounded. Stories of savages and unsophisticated barbarians come to mind, that is before the region was "liberated" by the People Liberation Army. The Chinese government has much avoided the topic of policies that were implemented in Han China during the Cultural Revolution, but they have pleaded complete amnesia to policies that were implemented in minority regions like Xinijang and Tibet during the same time frame - because they were often far far worse than anything that happened in the east. Based on my travels many monks still live with memories of the Cultural Revolution and wounds that have never been brought in to the open, or in fact have swept under the carpet as if they never happened, and that only leaves a deeper resentment. Some of which has boiled over this week.
With all the assimilation, immigration and business buildup in Tibet it is hard for Tibetans not to feel like second class citizens in their own homes. Now this has happened countless times throughout history to parts of the world that have been invaded and colonized; the British in India, Europeans in North and South America for example. But this is somewhat different in that today we live in a world of fixed territorial boundaries and issues of national security that reign supreme; a much different world that when the British governed Pakistan and India. In today's world the buzz word of stability, or the impression of stability, reigns supreme in many developing countries in the world today; and China is perhaps the perfect example. It's booming economy and upcoming Olympic games means that there is a lot to lose, and media attention is getting fierce, the impression of stability is of the utmost importance. But you can only keep people down for so long, and this quote by Zhang Qingli, the Communist Party Leader of Tibet, the highest ranking official in the territory, seem to speak volumes of the dissatisfaction by Tibetans of Han rule. Zhang says in an interview last year, "The Communist Party is like the parent to the Tibetan people, and it is always considerate about what the children need. He later added: "The Central Party Committee is the real Buddha for Tibetans." What more can I say, when top government officials put their foot in their own mouths this well!
To be honest, I had hope for Tibet under Chinese rule up until a few weeks ago. China's current president Hu Jinatao was the Party Leader of Tibet from 1988 and had experienced, and was generally responsible for the, crack down in 1989. My hope was that he had learned his lessons and might have been able to avoid similar situations, but it's clear that the current party chief is stuck in the 1960s mentality of governing Tibet. The future looks bleak indeed: wrong thinking ministers, trigger happy soldiers and a complete blockade against independent observers and journalists are all steps in the wrong direction. When will China learn that this behavior just doesn't fly when you view yourself as an emerging superpower? Maybe never. Will further gaps in stability plague China in its minority hinterlands? Only time will tell. But my guess is this will be the most political Olympics on record and China will weather each storm with heavy-handed crackdowns, prompting further resentment. And so the vicious circle continues.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Ryan Pyle Blog: Looking Back...........Toronto
Hello,
I've been wanting to write this blog for about a week now, but something has always come up and postponed it; well not today.
I wanted a moment to reflect on my most recent trip back to Toronto. I had originally planned the trip back to Toronto for my brothers wedding and a bit of time with family. But that soon became just the anchor to what was an intense week of photography and lecturing.
First off, having stayed in touch with my former Chinese Politics professor at the University of Toronto, I was invited back to the university in late February to give two lectures to 2nd and 3rd year undergrad classes studying contemporary Chinese Politics. I was really pleased to have had this opportunity and I embraced it.
I prepared a two hour lecture on some of the negative impacts of rapid Chinese economic growth, using a basic model that there are essentially two China's; the urban centers and the countryside - and the gap between them widens further each year. Supporting this main argument I touched on local corruption, environmental destruction, land rights, poverty, health care and education. I intertwined a lot of facts and statistics with a lot of personal stories about hair raising experiences doing journalism work in China - it was great fun. It was also the first time I have ever stood up and talked for 2 hours, but once I got cracking along it was easy enough. The class was well received and I know many of the students enjoyed a change of pace from the regular lectures delivered by the professors. I've since been invited back to lecture again next year, once my final plans are formalized for my next trip to Toronto.
Hopefully some of the students have signed on to the blog and are keeping watch of all the turmoil that has been happening recently. But I'll save those details for another blog - some time soon.
So, the lecturing went well and it is absolutely something I would like to do in the future; not just at the University of Toronto but at other institutions as well. I feel that my day to day life in China, and my photojournalism work in the country offers me a unique perspective that I want to share with as many people as possible. Obviously I would love to write a book about some of these issues some day, but alas finding the time is just not possible at the moment.
The second portion of the trip back to Toronto involved my very first photography exhibition. The topic was Chinese Turkistan, also known as the province of Xinjiang province in northwestern China. I have spent a significant amount of time in the last two years traveling in Xinjiang, attempting to document life and culture - I felt this first stage of the project was a success. I called the show Chinese Turkistan because I wanted the imagery to remind people of the special Silk Road history and wealth of culture that exists in this very special region of China. I felt the show was well attended and very well received and I am hoping to continue on with another show next year in 2009. The only question that remains is the venue, whether we will be in Toronto again or perhaps London, UK. Hopefully I'll know in the next few months.
The last stop of my trip back to Toronto was to be the best man at my brothers wedding. Now, I don't talk much about my personal life on this blog, and it's safe to assume that won't change anytime soon, but it was great to be back and catch up with a lot of family and friends that I hadn't seen in ages. When you live a long way away, going back and having everyone together for one special night is a great thing. A true pleasure.
More soon.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
I've been wanting to write this blog for about a week now, but something has always come up and postponed it; well not today.
I wanted a moment to reflect on my most recent trip back to Toronto. I had originally planned the trip back to Toronto for my brothers wedding and a bit of time with family. But that soon became just the anchor to what was an intense week of photography and lecturing.
First off, having stayed in touch with my former Chinese Politics professor at the University of Toronto, I was invited back to the university in late February to give two lectures to 2nd and 3rd year undergrad classes studying contemporary Chinese Politics. I was really pleased to have had this opportunity and I embraced it.
I prepared a two hour lecture on some of the negative impacts of rapid Chinese economic growth, using a basic model that there are essentially two China's; the urban centers and the countryside - and the gap between them widens further each year. Supporting this main argument I touched on local corruption, environmental destruction, land rights, poverty, health care and education. I intertwined a lot of facts and statistics with a lot of personal stories about hair raising experiences doing journalism work in China - it was great fun. It was also the first time I have ever stood up and talked for 2 hours, but once I got cracking along it was easy enough. The class was well received and I know many of the students enjoyed a change of pace from the regular lectures delivered by the professors. I've since been invited back to lecture again next year, once my final plans are formalized for my next trip to Toronto.
Hopefully some of the students have signed on to the blog and are keeping watch of all the turmoil that has been happening recently. But I'll save those details for another blog - some time soon.
So, the lecturing went well and it is absolutely something I would like to do in the future; not just at the University of Toronto but at other institutions as well. I feel that my day to day life in China, and my photojournalism work in the country offers me a unique perspective that I want to share with as many people as possible. Obviously I would love to write a book about some of these issues some day, but alas finding the time is just not possible at the moment.
The second portion of the trip back to Toronto involved my very first photography exhibition. The topic was Chinese Turkistan, also known as the province of Xinjiang province in northwestern China. I have spent a significant amount of time in the last two years traveling in Xinjiang, attempting to document life and culture - I felt this first stage of the project was a success. I called the show Chinese Turkistan because I wanted the imagery to remind people of the special Silk Road history and wealth of culture that exists in this very special region of China. I felt the show was well attended and very well received and I am hoping to continue on with another show next year in 2009. The only question that remains is the venue, whether we will be in Toronto again or perhaps London, UK. Hopefully I'll know in the next few months.
The last stop of my trip back to Toronto was to be the best man at my brothers wedding. Now, I don't talk much about my personal life on this blog, and it's safe to assume that won't change anytime soon, but it was great to be back and catch up with a lot of family and friends that I hadn't seen in ages. When you live a long way away, going back and having everyone together for one special night is a great thing. A true pleasure.
More soon.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Ryan Pyle Blog: Last Call: Exhibition - Chinese Turkistan by Ryan Pyle
Hello,
Well, the days have flown by and the gallery show is tomorrow, THURSDAY FEBRUARY 28TH. As you know I have been living in Shanghai, China for the last five years and during that time I've been working on a photography project about Xinjiang, a Muslim region in the Northwest of China. It's a black and white art photography exhibition about the life and culture of this remote region. Anyways, if you are in and around Toronto on Feb. 28th then it would be great if you could drop by. Details are below:
LINK: http://www.elevatorworkshops.com/rpyle.shtml
Thursday February 28th 2008
6pm Until 9pm
ELEVATOR STUDIO
42 Industrial St.
Toronto, ON M4G 1Y9
416.406.3131
888.470.7555
info@elevatorworkshops.com
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Well, the days have flown by and the gallery show is tomorrow, THURSDAY FEBRUARY 28TH. As you know I have been living in Shanghai, China for the last five years and during that time I've been working on a photography project about Xinjiang, a Muslim region in the Northwest of China. It's a black and white art photography exhibition about the life and culture of this remote region. Anyways, if you are in and around Toronto on Feb. 28th then it would be great if you could drop by. Details are below:
LINK: http://www.elevatorworkshops.com/rpyle.shtml
Thursday February 28th 2008
6pm Until 9pm
ELEVATOR STUDIO
42 Industrial St.
Toronto, ON M4G 1Y9
416.406.3131
888.470.7555
info@elevatorworkshops.com
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, February 15, 2008
Ryan Pyle Blog: My Witopia
Regular readers will know how much I despise the Great Fire Wall of China. That's right, internet access in China is pathetic. Slow download, slow uploading and nearly impossible to enjoy YouTube or even my personal favorite - ESPN.com. To be brutally honest, I don't even care about the censoring of websites and the blocking of information. What I care about most is having my pictures seen by people, and that involves me getting them out of China. In basic terms this Great Fire Wall of China is just bad for business.
But alas, I have a solution - albeit not a complete solution.
I have recently acquired a Virtual Private Network through a company named WiTopia. (http://www.witopia.net/). I am not too technical, but apparently this VPN allows me to avoid the fire wall in China and enjoy freer and faster uploading and downloading. The VPN was USD40 per year, a massive investment of USD3.33 per month.
I've been using the service for about one month now and I can tell you all by experience, it is better - but it is still not great.
What do I mean? Well, I can access all blocked websites like the BBC, TIME, Human Rights Watch and a host of others. But the bandwidth is still crawling along at a regular snails pace.
Where I do find value in this service is in the Uploading or when I FTP my images out of China. I find I can get my pictures out 2 or even 3 times faster than when I am not using the VPN. It's still a lot slower than the US and Europe, but it is an early solution and it has eased some of my headache.
So when will I find a complete solution to my internet troubles? Perhaps when the PARTY ends it's paranoia about freedom of information, and when the state run monopoly of China Telecom ceases to exist and consumers have the right to choose between services based on attributes like stability and speed. But alas, that is a long long long time away.
Just wanted to share that with anyone out there who is suffering from a similar fate.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
But alas, I have a solution - albeit not a complete solution.
I have recently acquired a Virtual Private Network through a company named WiTopia. (http://www.witopia.net/). I am not too technical, but apparently this VPN allows me to avoid the fire wall in China and enjoy freer and faster uploading and downloading. The VPN was USD40 per year, a massive investment of USD3.33 per month.
I've been using the service for about one month now and I can tell you all by experience, it is better - but it is still not great.
What do I mean? Well, I can access all blocked websites like the BBC, TIME, Human Rights Watch and a host of others. But the bandwidth is still crawling along at a regular snails pace.
Where I do find value in this service is in the Uploading or when I FTP my images out of China. I find I can get my pictures out 2 or even 3 times faster than when I am not using the VPN. It's still a lot slower than the US and Europe, but it is an early solution and it has eased some of my headache.
So when will I find a complete solution to my internet troubles? Perhaps when the PARTY ends it's paranoia about freedom of information, and when the state run monopoly of China Telecom ceases to exist and consumers have the right to choose between services based on attributes like stability and speed. But alas, that is a long long long time away.
Just wanted to share that with anyone out there who is suffering from a similar fate.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, February 01, 2008
Ryan Pyle Blog: Land & Property
Hello,
Anticipating that anyone out there might be reading, and in an effort to write a blog at least twice a month, I've decided that the 1st and the 15th of every month made solid initial writing dates. I honestly don't know how people blog every day!
You'll notice that this blog wasn't published until Feb.11, but at least I started writing it on Feb.1st. Still a weak effort I know.
Today I would like to walk through two stories I recently shot regarding land and property rights. One was in a rural region of the country and the other was in a suburb of Shanghai.
1) The Shanghai Story:
Many of you might have seen the New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/world/asia/27shanghai.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=asia) on China's urban middle class organizing themselves against the government over the extension of the ultra high speed Magnetic Levitation (MagLev) Train. The article was written by a good friend and colleague of mine, Howard W. French. His story used first person accounts of how China's emerging middle class feel about their own property, and also how they feel about new infrastructure projects near there homes - and how that may effect their property value; a series of thoughts and calculations that just didn't exist 15 years ago. The country is indeed changing fast.
First some background. The Shanghai government announced that they would like to extend the 430 km/hr MagLev train from Shanghai to Hangzhou, a boom town specializing in high tech products and internet businesses. The plans call for the train to travel through a densely populated suburb of Shanghai, named Minghang district.
Residents of Minghang are mostly well educated working professionals who commute back and forth to the Shanghai city center, or to nearby industrial parks, for work. Many of the men and women I met during my two days in the area were university educated, mainly engineers. These working professionals are all new home owners and they take a lot of pride in the fact that they've been able to purchase a home in the greater Shanghai area. News of a 430 km/hr MagLev track passing some 100 meters from their residential complex did not generate the excitement the Shanghai government was looking for.
So, instead of "taking it" quietly, as was much the norm in the past, our highly educated and highly motivated working professionals have decided to organize and protest. Protests and public gathering that are not sanctioned by the government are, of course, illegal. And protest they did. A protest in People's Square in downtown Shanghai on the day that Gordon Brown was visiting. Websites, blogs, SMS's circulating their district, signed petitions presented to local government, daily meetings at night to discuss progress on talks with the government, etc, etc.
The backlash from the government at first was typical, plain clothes thugs dispersed throughout the residential complex, intimidating those attending meetings; one house arrest; one man was beaten and then it stopped and civility took over. Dialog took the place of the security forces trying to scare people. The shift was welcomed by most.
It was an interesting process to watch as a journalist, the residents of the complex were very keen to have the foreign media there; and this is where my doubts began to set in. Protesters had three main complaints, one is health related, the other is noise and the last was decreased property value.
Now, having a 430 km/hr train speed past your house will decrease property value; and the health concerns (which I don't fully comprehend) seemed a bit much. The noise issue seemed frivolous. To speak plainly, this was all about money, it was the property value that struck a cord with these folks. Noise is negligible since most of Shanghai's streets are a complete nightmare at all times of day - one could hardly imagine hearing the MagLev train speed past over the street noise with include taxi's and buses honking horns at all hours of the day.
So with property value as the key issue it was easy to motivate other residents, several thousands in fact who ended up signing petitions and protesting the train. But in talking with many of the residents and breaking down their arguments and understanding their motives, I feel mostly they just saw this as their chance for a government handout, a one off payment to compensate these folks for putting a high speed train next to their homes. It wouldn't be the first time the government has paid off people to keep them quiet, and my guess is the MagLev train is important enough that they'll most likely pay these residents off as well. Therefore setting a president that protesting and involving the foreign media works. The next case should be even more interesting.
2) The Countryside Story:
This story hasn't been published yet so I can go too much in to detail about locations and such, but it's typical of much of what is happening in the countryside these days.
A small inlet of local farmers have lived on their land for 3 and 4 generations in most cases. They were farmers and that was all they knew. Late last year the government decided that those farmers were sitting on some prime land, as the area around them was pristine bamboo forests. Local officials could smell tourist dollars, and they acted quick.
Initial notices were sent to farmers telling them that their land was being confiscated, and that they would be compensated accordingly. The only problem was, as always, the compensation was a fraction of what the land was worth, and more importantly what it meant to the farmers. No the Chinese government owns the land, this true. There is no private land ownership in Rural China. But it has been agreed upon that some type of subsidy must be made to residents for loss of future income; and this is often the cause of many problems.
Now I may be biased about this, but if you take someone's land away and they have no other skills, and almost no education then fair compensation must be made. But without an independent legal system there is really no incentive for the local government officials to treat farmers humanly.
To make a long story short the government eventually decided that enough was enough and brought in the bulldozers one day and kicked all the people (using force) out of their homes and then demolished their homes with all their belongings and furniture in their houses. They had nothing left but the clothes on their backs. The next day when they returned to the scene and tried to dig through their homes to salvage anything they could, they were beaten and arrested.
3) Brief Summary:
Two different stories about land and property rights. Two very different tactics used by residents and government officials. Where the Shanghai residents still await an official response regarding the MagLev, the farmers had their fate sealed with truly unbelievable cruelty. I don't have any grand response or solution to this problem. The provinces in China, and they're leaders have always had great autonomy from the central government in Beijing, in many cases they also control the legal system and banks as well. Surely, if this country (China) is to develop the way Beijing thinks it should, cases like the one in this farming community need to be stopped and corrupt officials need to be punished and made an example of; but as long as double digit growth continues to race head with no end in site, who cares about the rule of law, or the rights of Chinese people? Not the government.
China is going to have to face a stiff reality check sometime soon. And that day will be a nasty one indeed. I hope the country can change and can create an independent rule of law and respect it's people and take the clamps off the media. Voting may speed this process up, but in my mind it's not completely necessary.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Anticipating that anyone out there might be reading, and in an effort to write a blog at least twice a month, I've decided that the 1st and the 15th of every month made solid initial writing dates. I honestly don't know how people blog every day!
You'll notice that this blog wasn't published until Feb.11, but at least I started writing it on Feb.1st. Still a weak effort I know.
Today I would like to walk through two stories I recently shot regarding land and property rights. One was in a rural region of the country and the other was in a suburb of Shanghai.
1) The Shanghai Story:
Many of you might have seen the New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/world/asia/27shanghai.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=asia) on China's urban middle class organizing themselves against the government over the extension of the ultra high speed Magnetic Levitation (MagLev) Train. The article was written by a good friend and colleague of mine, Howard W. French. His story used first person accounts of how China's emerging middle class feel about their own property, and also how they feel about new infrastructure projects near there homes - and how that may effect their property value; a series of thoughts and calculations that just didn't exist 15 years ago. The country is indeed changing fast.
First some background. The Shanghai government announced that they would like to extend the 430 km/hr MagLev train from Shanghai to Hangzhou, a boom town specializing in high tech products and internet businesses. The plans call for the train to travel through a densely populated suburb of Shanghai, named Minghang district.
Residents of Minghang are mostly well educated working professionals who commute back and forth to the Shanghai city center, or to nearby industrial parks, for work. Many of the men and women I met during my two days in the area were university educated, mainly engineers. These working professionals are all new home owners and they take a lot of pride in the fact that they've been able to purchase a home in the greater Shanghai area. News of a 430 km/hr MagLev track passing some 100 meters from their residential complex did not generate the excitement the Shanghai government was looking for.
So, instead of "taking it" quietly, as was much the norm in the past, our highly educated and highly motivated working professionals have decided to organize and protest. Protests and public gathering that are not sanctioned by the government are, of course, illegal. And protest they did. A protest in People's Square in downtown Shanghai on the day that Gordon Brown was visiting. Websites, blogs, SMS's circulating their district, signed petitions presented to local government, daily meetings at night to discuss progress on talks with the government, etc, etc.
The backlash from the government at first was typical, plain clothes thugs dispersed throughout the residential complex, intimidating those attending meetings; one house arrest; one man was beaten and then it stopped and civility took over. Dialog took the place of the security forces trying to scare people. The shift was welcomed by most.
It was an interesting process to watch as a journalist, the residents of the complex were very keen to have the foreign media there; and this is where my doubts began to set in. Protesters had three main complaints, one is health related, the other is noise and the last was decreased property value.
Now, having a 430 km/hr train speed past your house will decrease property value; and the health concerns (which I don't fully comprehend) seemed a bit much. The noise issue seemed frivolous. To speak plainly, this was all about money, it was the property value that struck a cord with these folks. Noise is negligible since most of Shanghai's streets are a complete nightmare at all times of day - one could hardly imagine hearing the MagLev train speed past over the street noise with include taxi's and buses honking horns at all hours of the day.
So with property value as the key issue it was easy to motivate other residents, several thousands in fact who ended up signing petitions and protesting the train. But in talking with many of the residents and breaking down their arguments and understanding their motives, I feel mostly they just saw this as their chance for a government handout, a one off payment to compensate these folks for putting a high speed train next to their homes. It wouldn't be the first time the government has paid off people to keep them quiet, and my guess is the MagLev train is important enough that they'll most likely pay these residents off as well. Therefore setting a president that protesting and involving the foreign media works. The next case should be even more interesting.
2) The Countryside Story:
This story hasn't been published yet so I can go too much in to detail about locations and such, but it's typical of much of what is happening in the countryside these days.
A small inlet of local farmers have lived on their land for 3 and 4 generations in most cases. They were farmers and that was all they knew. Late last year the government decided that those farmers were sitting on some prime land, as the area around them was pristine bamboo forests. Local officials could smell tourist dollars, and they acted quick.
Initial notices were sent to farmers telling them that their land was being confiscated, and that they would be compensated accordingly. The only problem was, as always, the compensation was a fraction of what the land was worth, and more importantly what it meant to the farmers. No the Chinese government owns the land, this true. There is no private land ownership in Rural China. But it has been agreed upon that some type of subsidy must be made to residents for loss of future income; and this is often the cause of many problems.
Now I may be biased about this, but if you take someone's land away and they have no other skills, and almost no education then fair compensation must be made. But without an independent legal system there is really no incentive for the local government officials to treat farmers humanly.
To make a long story short the government eventually decided that enough was enough and brought in the bulldozers one day and kicked all the people (using force) out of their homes and then demolished their homes with all their belongings and furniture in their houses. They had nothing left but the clothes on their backs. The next day when they returned to the scene and tried to dig through their homes to salvage anything they could, they were beaten and arrested.
3) Brief Summary:
Two different stories about land and property rights. Two very different tactics used by residents and government officials. Where the Shanghai residents still await an official response regarding the MagLev, the farmers had their fate sealed with truly unbelievable cruelty. I don't have any grand response or solution to this problem. The provinces in China, and they're leaders have always had great autonomy from the central government in Beijing, in many cases they also control the legal system and banks as well. Surely, if this country (China) is to develop the way Beijing thinks it should, cases like the one in this farming community need to be stopped and corrupt officials need to be punished and made an example of; but as long as double digit growth continues to race head with no end in site, who cares about the rule of law, or the rights of Chinese people? Not the government.
China is going to have to face a stiff reality check sometime soon. And that day will be a nasty one indeed. I hope the country can change and can create an independent rule of law and respect it's people and take the clamps off the media. Voting may speed this process up, but in my mind it's not completely necessary.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Ryan Pyle Blog: My Sorry Sorry Blog
Hello,
I can't even imagine what happened, it just totally slipped my mind.
Today I found the link for my blog and noticed that my last blog entry was June 29 2007. That is really and truly pathetic, and for anyone out there who may actually read my blog, I am sorry for my tardy behavior.
It's January 2008, and it's a month for resolutions. And while things like getting to the gym more regularly and eating healthier are high on my agenda, blogging regularly is - believe it or not - at the top on my agenda.
The reasons why blogging takes top spot are two fold. Firstly, I am interested in creating a space for dialog about my work and my experiences in China. Second, I am interested in keeping a type of diary of my life and work in China; and what better way to do that then share my experiences with all of you.
Today is January 17th, my goal is to have regular monthly blogs - weekly might be a bit too ambitious. I'm going to try to discuss projects I am working on and experiences that I have during them. I hope, if there is anyone left who still subscribes, that the new format and rejuvenated effort, will be an enjoyable read for anyone interested in China and photojournalism.
All comments and suggestions are more than welcome and for those who commented in the past, you'll know that I always reply and encourage dialog.
All the best in 2008.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
I can't even imagine what happened, it just totally slipped my mind.
Today I found the link for my blog and noticed that my last blog entry was June 29 2007. That is really and truly pathetic, and for anyone out there who may actually read my blog, I am sorry for my tardy behavior.
It's January 2008, and it's a month for resolutions. And while things like getting to the gym more regularly and eating healthier are high on my agenda, blogging regularly is - believe it or not - at the top on my agenda.
The reasons why blogging takes top spot are two fold. Firstly, I am interested in creating a space for dialog about my work and my experiences in China. Second, I am interested in keeping a type of diary of my life and work in China; and what better way to do that then share my experiences with all of you.
Today is January 17th, my goal is to have regular monthly blogs - weekly might be a bit too ambitious. I'm going to try to discuss projects I am working on and experiences that I have during them. I hope, if there is anyone left who still subscribes, that the new format and rejuvenated effort, will be an enjoyable read for anyone interested in China and photojournalism.
All comments and suggestions are more than welcome and for those who commented in the past, you'll know that I always reply and encourage dialog.
All the best in 2008.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Friday, June 29, 2007
Ryan Pyle Blog: China's War Against the Internet
As I sit here at my desk in Shanghai, China I am concerned by the war that is taking place inside China at the moment. For those who live here you know exactly what I am talking about, I am referring to the government's war against the internet.
Currently I am trying to upload images to my archive in NYC, I am getting a whopping 5.4KB/s and it's taking an average of 5-7 minutes per image to get this new work uploaded. When I was in Hong Kong last weekend for work I managed to upload about 100 megabytes of images in less than ten minutes; Hong Kong of course has free and un-censored internet access. China does not. But this isn't the whole story.
The government in China can be felt in every aspect of life, and that is to be assumed since China's ruling politicians continue to see the country as a "socialist" state. I use hyphens because sitting at my desk in Shanghai I can count no less than 17 buildings that seem to be greater than 40 stories high, and my apartment only faces north-east. It's clear that China's brand is a special kind of socialism.
But back to the war. The Chinese government owns and controls access to the internet. Meaning that they can block, slow down and shut down essentially anything they want. Sure there are proxies and such but they have been begun blocking the sites to download proxies. This all encompassing behavior by the PRC's government has lead to a mass of critical articles written by the world media, discussing things like "Net-Nannies" and "Cyber Cops"; and all these things are essentially true. There are rumors out there that some 40,000 people in China make a full time living from the government by surfing the web and fishing out "unacceptable" content. Sites like this one, Blogger.com are blocked, for example.
Now, let's move beyond that. Sure there will always be malicious content on the web that will be blocked in countries that rule in a one party system. There will be bloggers who disapprove of corruption, land seizures, web access, education, human rights and so on and so forth. All that, believe it or not, feels fairly standard for me after living in China for five years.
What I can't seem to tolerate is the government's heavy handed policy's on sites that don't directly criticize government actions. For example, the powers that be in China recently blocked FLICKR.com. But they didn't exactly block the site entirely, they just blocked the pictures - the website still operates and people can still log in and check their mail and contacts, etc. This is apparently in response to a some photographs that appeared on FLICKR after some police beat a woman selling food on the street in a city in central China.
So now FLICKR is being used as a political tool, perhaps not what its creators had intended. But let's look at who these creators are, oh that right. Yahoo.com owns and operates FLICKR. And wasn't it just a few years back when Yahoo cooperated with the Chinese government and passed along secrete details about one man's email account that ended up getting that person imprisoned? Afterwards Yahoo.com took an incredible amount of heat for their decision to cooperate, and now just a few years later this is how they are rewarded, by blocking the worlds most popular photo sharing website. It makes little sense.
Blocking sites, blocking pictures, slow FTP and obtaining personal information from web companies by threatening to shut down their China operations, are just some of the ways in which China is engaged in an all out war with the internet. Who will win, well I think the internet will win. People will always create new technology to stay one step ahead of Cisco System, the provider of most of China's Net Nannie equipment.
The real question, however, isn't who will win and who will lose, it's about the cost of this war. How many business suffer in China because of slow and impeded web access. How many good opinions are blocked when trying to isolate a few bad one's? How many beautiful pictures of China are blocked in relation to the one's from that protest and beating in Central China? Does all this just seem a little too paranoid? Does it seem like just a little too much? It does, I am sick of it. In the time it took to write this blog I have only been able to upload 4 images out of my batch of 30. Efficiency is king, and China is at the bottom end of that spectrum.
ps. I really hope this is the last time I have to write about my slow FTP problems in China.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Currently I am trying to upload images to my archive in NYC, I am getting a whopping 5.4KB/s and it's taking an average of 5-7 minutes per image to get this new work uploaded. When I was in Hong Kong last weekend for work I managed to upload about 100 megabytes of images in less than ten minutes; Hong Kong of course has free and un-censored internet access. China does not. But this isn't the whole story.
The government in China can be felt in every aspect of life, and that is to be assumed since China's ruling politicians continue to see the country as a "socialist" state. I use hyphens because sitting at my desk in Shanghai I can count no less than 17 buildings that seem to be greater than 40 stories high, and my apartment only faces north-east. It's clear that China's brand is a special kind of socialism.
But back to the war. The Chinese government owns and controls access to the internet. Meaning that they can block, slow down and shut down essentially anything they want. Sure there are proxies and such but they have been begun blocking the sites to download proxies. This all encompassing behavior by the PRC's government has lead to a mass of critical articles written by the world media, discussing things like "Net-Nannies" and "Cyber Cops"; and all these things are essentially true. There are rumors out there that some 40,000 people in China make a full time living from the government by surfing the web and fishing out "unacceptable" content. Sites like this one, Blogger.com are blocked, for example.
Now, let's move beyond that. Sure there will always be malicious content on the web that will be blocked in countries that rule in a one party system. There will be bloggers who disapprove of corruption, land seizures, web access, education, human rights and so on and so forth. All that, believe it or not, feels fairly standard for me after living in China for five years.
What I can't seem to tolerate is the government's heavy handed policy's on sites that don't directly criticize government actions. For example, the powers that be in China recently blocked FLICKR.com. But they didn't exactly block the site entirely, they just blocked the pictures - the website still operates and people can still log in and check their mail and contacts, etc. This is apparently in response to a some photographs that appeared on FLICKR after some police beat a woman selling food on the street in a city in central China.
So now FLICKR is being used as a political tool, perhaps not what its creators had intended. But let's look at who these creators are, oh that right. Yahoo.com owns and operates FLICKR. And wasn't it just a few years back when Yahoo cooperated with the Chinese government and passed along secrete details about one man's email account that ended up getting that person imprisoned? Afterwards Yahoo.com took an incredible amount of heat for their decision to cooperate, and now just a few years later this is how they are rewarded, by blocking the worlds most popular photo sharing website. It makes little sense.
Blocking sites, blocking pictures, slow FTP and obtaining personal information from web companies by threatening to shut down their China operations, are just some of the ways in which China is engaged in an all out war with the internet. Who will win, well I think the internet will win. People will always create new technology to stay one step ahead of Cisco System, the provider of most of China's Net Nannie equipment.
The real question, however, isn't who will win and who will lose, it's about the cost of this war. How many business suffer in China because of slow and impeded web access. How many good opinions are blocked when trying to isolate a few bad one's? How many beautiful pictures of China are blocked in relation to the one's from that protest and beating in Central China? Does all this just seem a little too paranoid? Does it seem like just a little too much? It does, I am sick of it. In the time it took to write this blog I have only been able to upload 4 images out of my batch of 30. Efficiency is king, and China is at the bottom end of that spectrum.
ps. I really hope this is the last time I have to write about my slow FTP problems in China.
--
Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Monday, June 11, 2007
Ryan Pyle Blog: Rules, What Rules?
I was witness to something last week that was shocking. And its my opinion that this incident, and behavior like it, is becoming more typical of China's elite.
Living in Shanghai, a bustling city of around 20 million, I am subject to witnessing a lot of different types of behavior. One type of behavior will be the subject of today's blog, my colleagues and I like to call it the "I'm above the law" syndrome. A typical description of this behavior might be when a member of China's new elite, a government official or wealthy business person, parks his new Porshe or BMW or Audi A6 in a "No Parking Zone". The problem with this is that there are police officers on every street corner in Shanghai directing traffic and the illegally parked car is quick to be ticketed. Should the owner or driver be in the immediate area when this is occurring a yelling match is often quick to follow. Emotions often run very high in big urban centers.
As I walk around this city on my weekends, doing a lot of street photography, I constantly see car owners yelling at police men. In many cases the car owners simply don't like being told what to do, they feel that because they drive a nice car, or any car at all, that they are above the law and can essentially do what they want. This is often the same for traffic laws as well. In all my travels in all the world I have never witnessed car owners (and drivers) yelling red-faced at traffic police officers. It's a new phenomenon in China, and it's my opinion that it's happening more often in China's larger cities where wealth flourishes.
Now, I frequently travel from Shanghai to Hong Kong. I do this for a variety of reasons from picking up camera gear to re-connecting with friends that I made when I was living there in 2002/2003. Because of my frequent visits to Hong Kong I am eligible for a Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) Frequent Visitors (FV) Card. It's nothing special, if you visit more than 3 times a year you are eligible and it essentially means that you don't have to wait in the passport check / immigration lines. It's a great service and its something it really makes my travel much much easier. I was in HKIA last Friday June 8th at 5pm. After checking in I was moving to the immigration section or passport checking area to depart Hong Kong. Upon entering the passport checking area I notice that the regular immigration line up was huge, luckily I reached for my HKIA FV Card and headed up to the desk. Just as I was about to enter the line I was gently nudged aside by 4 Chinese passport holders.
They seemed in a rush so I slowed my step and let them enter the line ahead of me. Things stayed calm until the attendant who administers the Frequent Visitor line determined that none of these Chinese folks had FV Cards. When the attendant asked the four Chinese passport holders to re-join the regular line for exiting Hong Kong the trouble started.
The HKIA attendant began to ask, in Mandarin, a series of questions very calmly. "Do you have a Frequent Visitors Card?" "Are you late for your flight?" "Why are you in such a rush?" It seemed like a very rational set of questions for a group of people who seemed most determined to jump the line.
The Chinese passport holders than began to ignore the HKIA attendant and as he continued to ask questions and try to demand answer the Chinese folks just snickered amongst themselves and one man was actually laughing. The only woman of the group actually raised her hand, as if to wave him off and get him to stop with the questions. This group of Chinese passport holders clearly didn't have the HKIA FV Card, and they didn't seem to care. It became obvious that they felt they had the complete right to jump the line.
After a few minutes the HKIA attendant gave up, and the Chinese passport holders jumped the line and passed through with nothing but a few dirty looks from the people in the regular line. I stood back in awe, what had I just been a witness to?
A group of four Chinese passport holders, dressed in business attire, had brought their "I'm above the law" attitude to the HKIA. In effect this attitude, which is all too common in China had just been exported to Hong Kong. I was disappointed. I feel its one thing for people to behave like that in their own country, but to export their air of superiority to a place like Hong Kong, which has a long and proud tradition of the Rule of Law, just didn't seem right.
Now the rule of law is weak in China and most people are aware of this. The law doesn't really protect human rights or property rights or really anything that matters. While the local governments have been quick to build massive court houses and legal administrative buildings, their actual capability to solve problems or administer law has been lacking. Now I agree that China's development has been the most rapid in human history and that when the economy grows this fast it's often the law that is left playing catch up, but what is troubling isn't that the courts are weak, it's that some people (mainly new elite) believe that the law doesn't apply to them or that they can throw money on the problem and it will go away.
A lot of you might think that I am making too much of this small incident at an airport, and perhaps I am. But if I am its because I am worried of an ever greater problem that I see just below the surface of incidents like this. I see a massive country producing wealth like there is no tomorrow. I see a country without any evidence of the Rule of Law. I see a small minority of the country who happen to be either politically connected or wealthy doing essentially what they want when they want and taking little or no regard for people around them. I see a country with a growing feeling of nationalism and an air of superiority that seems to be unchecked. This scares me.
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
China
ryan@ryanpyle.com
www.ryanpyle.com
Skype: ryanpyle
Living in Shanghai, a bustling city of around 20 million, I am subject to witnessing a lot of different types of behavior. One type of behavior will be the subject of today's blog, my colleagues and I like to call it the "I'm above the law" syndrome. A typical description of this behavior might be when a member of China's new elite, a government official or wealthy business person, parks his new Porshe or BMW or Audi A6 in a "No Parking Zone". The problem with this is that there are police officers on every street corner in Shanghai directing traffic and the illegally parked car is quick to be ticketed. Should the owner or driver be in the immediate area when this is occurring a yelling match is often quick to follow. Emotions often run very high in big urban centers.
As I walk around this city on my weekends, doing a lot of street photography, I constantly see car owners yelling at police men. In many cases the car owners simply don't like being told what to do, they feel that because they drive a nice car, or any car at all, that they are above the law and can essentially do what they want. This is often the same for traffic laws as well. In all my travels in all the world I have never witnessed car owners (and drivers) yelling red-faced at traffic police officers. It's a new phenomenon in China, and it's my opinion that it's happening more often in China's larger cities where wealth flourishes.
Now, I frequently travel from Shanghai to Hong Kong. I do this for a variety of reasons from picking up camera gear to re-connecting with friends that I made when I was living there in 2002/2003. Because of my frequent visits to Hong Kong I am eligible for a Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) Frequent Visitors (FV) Card. It's nothing special, if you visit more than 3 times a year you are eligible and it essentially means that you don't have to wait in the passport check / immigration lines. It's a great service and its something it really makes my travel much much easier. I was in HKIA last Friday June 8th at 5pm. After checking in I was moving to the immigration section or passport checking area to depart Hong Kong. Upon entering the passport checking area I notice that the regular immigration line up was huge, luckily I reached for my HKIA FV Card and headed up to the desk. Just as I was about to enter the line I was gently nudged aside by 4 Chinese passport holders.
They seemed in a rush so I slowed my step and let them enter the line ahead of me. Things stayed calm until the attendant who administers the Frequent Visitor line determined that none of these Chinese folks had FV Cards. When the attendant asked the four Chinese passport holders to re-join the regular line for exiting Hong Kong the trouble started.
The HKIA attendant began to ask, in Mandarin, a series of questions very calmly. "Do you have a Frequent Visitors Card?" "Are you late for your flight?" "Why are you in such a rush?" It seemed like a very rational set of questions for a group of people who seemed most determined to jump the line.
The Chinese passport holders than began to ignore the HKIA attendant and as he continued to ask questions and try to demand answer the Chinese folks just snickered amongst themselves and one man was actually laughing. The only woman of the group actually raised her hand, as if to wave him off and get him to stop with the questions. This group of Chinese passport holders clearly didn't have the HKIA FV Card, and they didn't seem to care. It became obvious that they felt they had the complete right to jump the line.
After a few minutes the HKIA attendant gave up, and the Chinese passport holders jumped the line and passed through with nothing but a few dirty looks from the people in the regular line. I stood back in awe, what had I just been a witness to?
A group of four Chinese passport holders, dressed in business attire, had brought their "I'm above the law" attitude to the HKIA. In effect this attitude, which is all too common in China had just been exported to Hong Kong. I was disappointed. I feel its one thing for people to behave like that in their own country, but to export their air of superiority to a place like Hong Kong, which has a long and proud tradition of the Rule of Law, just didn't seem right.
Now the rule of law is weak in China and most people are aware of this. The law doesn't really protect human rights or property rights or really anything that matters. While the local governments have been quick to build massive court houses and legal administrative buildings, their actual capability to solve problems or administer law has been lacking. Now I agree that China's development has been the most rapid in human history and that when the economy grows this fast it's often the law that is left playing catch up, but what is troubling isn't that the courts are weak, it's that some people (mainly new elite) believe that the law doesn't apply to them or that they can throw money on the problem and it will go away.
A lot of you might think that I am making too much of this small incident at an airport, and perhaps I am. But if I am its because I am worried of an ever greater problem that I see just below the surface of incidents like this. I see a massive country producing wealth like there is no tomorrow. I see a country without any evidence of the Rule of Law. I see a small minority of the country who happen to be either politically connected or wealthy doing essentially what they want when they want and taking little or no regard for people around them. I see a country with a growing feeling of nationalism and an air of superiority that seems to be unchecked. This scares me.
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
China
ryan@ryanpyle.com
www.ryanpyle.com
Skype: ryanpyle
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Ryan Pyle Blog: The Role of the THUG
The Chinese countryside is a vast and expansive place. Roughly 700 million people call the rural regions of China home and with most of the wealth and good jobs existing in the urban areas, a lot of rural people find themselves with a whole lot of nothing to do. So often jobs are created out of nothing, and people often sit around for weeks until something rouses their attention.
Enter the THUG.
A thug is, at least as part of my vocabulary, a Mafia-like term meaning essentially "The Muscle". The body guards, and/or guys who do the dirty work. We've all seen them before in movies like: Goodfella's, The Godfather and my personal favorite, Casino.
Thugs in China often operate within the gray area that exists between the government and private industry. They don't exactly work for the government but they protect the interests of government and private industry, which are essentially the same thing in the remote regions. Thugs in China can intimidate local people to move off their land, keep local people quiet of certain incidents or help run interference when foreign journalists visit to snoop around....among many other things.
A few weeks ago I found myself in a remote region of Shandong province, for those who may not be sure it's the large province that sits just north of Shanghai and south of Beijing. I was working on an assignment that was part of the large food and drug quality controls that exist in China.
When my writing partner and I arrived in a remote village in Shangdong we could tell right away that the thugs had arrived first, and succeeded in intimidating the locals. None of the local villagers would to talk with us. As we moved down the streets attempting to converse, people ran in to their homes and bolted up there front doors. It wasn't the friendly welcome I had been hoping for, and it made getting a decent quote difficult.
After snooping around factories, and talking to the few people who didn't run away from us, the thugs arrived. They were driving a black Honda with tinted black windows. (it's always usually a black VW Santana with tinted windows but it was clear that business was good in this village)
After they harassed our driver they turned to us. As they started hurling questions at us about who we were and what we were doing; we replied with only "Who are you?". And that question seemed too difficult to answer. The man in charge, looking eye to eye with me was wearing black leather lofers, white pants mildly too tight, and a snug white t-shirt that exposed a beer belly. He stood dumb founded. As we produced business cards indicated who we were and what we did for a living this man in white was silenced. He lingered on that he worked for the government but wasn't a government official, he could produce no business card - a true rarity in China. (Even taxi drivers have business cards!)
The lead thug then began with his mobile, a new Motorola Razor, talking to the propaganda department of the local country who's job it was to my life as difficult as possible. As he continued on the phone my writing partner and I decided to hit the road and get out of dodge, so to speak. The locals were tight lipped, the doors were bolted and the thugs were calling in back up. This wasn't going to have a happy ending.
As we drove away from the village we noticed that our black Honda was following us, in fact they were right behind us. As we paced along at 100km/hr our thugs were less than 20m behind us and didn't have the decency to leave at least one car between us, very clandestine. They followed us, for over an hour, until we left the county. And while they were intrusive and essentially ruined our reporting, they did not pose a real physical threat like the baseball bat and hammer carrying thugs in the movies.
I've been done in by thugs in the past, whether it was my assistant/translator getting detained in Kashgar for 24 hours, or getting stopped by 3 cars full of thugs in Sichuan province, and detained for a full day. It happens, sadly, too often. Rarely are they violent or aggressive. Mostly they just are there to deter or distract. Instead of carrying aluminum baseball bats they carry Motorola Razors and European Carryalls for men. They get in the way, make threats and scare the locals from talking to us. It's a brutal moment on any assignment, seeing that black VW Santana (or Honda) arrive and having two or three badly dressed large men get out of the car and walk towards you......here we go, again.
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
China
ryan@ryanpyle.com
www.ryanpyle.com
Skype: ryanpyle
Enter the THUG.
A thug is, at least as part of my vocabulary, a Mafia-like term meaning essentially "The Muscle". The body guards, and/or guys who do the dirty work. We've all seen them before in movies like: Goodfella's, The Godfather and my personal favorite, Casino.
Thugs in China often operate within the gray area that exists between the government and private industry. They don't exactly work for the government but they protect the interests of government and private industry, which are essentially the same thing in the remote regions. Thugs in China can intimidate local people to move off their land, keep local people quiet of certain incidents or help run interference when foreign journalists visit to snoop around....among many other things.
A few weeks ago I found myself in a remote region of Shandong province, for those who may not be sure it's the large province that sits just north of Shanghai and south of Beijing. I was working on an assignment that was part of the large food and drug quality controls that exist in China.
When my writing partner and I arrived in a remote village in Shangdong we could tell right away that the thugs had arrived first, and succeeded in intimidating the locals. None of the local villagers would to talk with us. As we moved down the streets attempting to converse, people ran in to their homes and bolted up there front doors. It wasn't the friendly welcome I had been hoping for, and it made getting a decent quote difficult.
After snooping around factories, and talking to the few people who didn't run away from us, the thugs arrived. They were driving a black Honda with tinted black windows. (it's always usually a black VW Santana with tinted windows but it was clear that business was good in this village)
After they harassed our driver they turned to us. As they started hurling questions at us about who we were and what we were doing; we replied with only "Who are you?". And that question seemed too difficult to answer. The man in charge, looking eye to eye with me was wearing black leather lofers, white pants mildly too tight, and a snug white t-shirt that exposed a beer belly. He stood dumb founded. As we produced business cards indicated who we were and what we did for a living this man in white was silenced. He lingered on that he worked for the government but wasn't a government official, he could produce no business card - a true rarity in China. (Even taxi drivers have business cards!)
The lead thug then began with his mobile, a new Motorola Razor, talking to the propaganda department of the local country who's job it was to my life as difficult as possible. As he continued on the phone my writing partner and I decided to hit the road and get out of dodge, so to speak. The locals were tight lipped, the doors were bolted and the thugs were calling in back up. This wasn't going to have a happy ending.
As we drove away from the village we noticed that our black Honda was following us, in fact they were right behind us. As we paced along at 100km/hr our thugs were less than 20m behind us and didn't have the decency to leave at least one car between us, very clandestine. They followed us, for over an hour, until we left the county. And while they were intrusive and essentially ruined our reporting, they did not pose a real physical threat like the baseball bat and hammer carrying thugs in the movies.
I've been done in by thugs in the past, whether it was my assistant/translator getting detained in Kashgar for 24 hours, or getting stopped by 3 cars full of thugs in Sichuan province, and detained for a full day. It happens, sadly, too often. Rarely are they violent or aggressive. Mostly they just are there to deter or distract. Instead of carrying aluminum baseball bats they carry Motorola Razors and European Carryalls for men. They get in the way, make threats and scare the locals from talking to us. It's a brutal moment on any assignment, seeing that black VW Santana (or Honda) arrive and having two or three badly dressed large men get out of the car and walk towards you......here we go, again.
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
China
ryan@ryanpyle.com
www.ryanpyle.com
Skype: ryanpyle
Friday, May 11, 2007
Ryan Pyle Blog: China: Renewable Energy - Wind Power
China is sending a mixed message to the world, and the world is becoming increasingly impatient. While investing and promoting renewable energy within its borders, China has continually failed to make any progress in curbing its carbon emissions, which are set to move past the United States this year; making China the worlds number one polluter.
China's increasing energy needs are not slowing down, in fact they are increasing and in doing so they are beginning to catch headlines around the world as investment in oil rich Sudan, Nigeria, Venezuela and Iran are causing western countries to loath China's deep pockets, and their seemingly lack of investment conscience. But that is abroad, at home China is actually pursuing renewable energy, the problem is they haven't done anything to cut back on coal power or heavy industry. And therein lies the heart of the problem; China can develop as much renewable energy as it likes, but without serious policy on stopping the polluting that existing, nothing will really change.
While change is stagnant on the ground, China continues to grasp headlines stating that by 2020 China expects to supply about 10 percent of its energy needs from various forms of renewable energy, meaning: wind, solar, hydro electric and biomass. That is a significant increase given China's miniscule starting point. But more important than statistics and headlines is that Chinese law makers, while avoiding making missed pollution targets a serious offense, have passed a law in February 2006 that formalizes many incentives and clear targets for increased power generation from renewable sources. The most significant section of this new law may indeed be that China's provincial governments will be required by law to purchase a certain percentage of their required electricity from alternative providers, even when the cost is greater.
This law has essentially guaranteed the existence of the renewable energy industry in China, wind and solar power have been the biggest beneficiaries. Wind power farms are being erected throughout China at a dizzying pace and domestic suppliers are rushing in to the industry to supply this need but beware, there is a bottle neck looming. Currently China's antique power grid is incapable of handling this increase in energy production, its grid is incapable of automatically re-routing electricity from one region to another as supply and demand fluctuate. This makes taking full advantage of a large investment in renewable energy almost impossible in the short term.
Although there are barriers China, the country is still home to 16 of the worlds 20 most polluted cities and things must begin to change. Even with all the problems that exist, it's held that China has the most wind power potential of any country in the world, taking into account its inland and offshore sites; and that is enough to get the ball rolling. With that in mind I have begun a long term project on China's push to integrate renewable energy. With this report I will try to show that China is suffering from a multiple personality disorder, by promoting and offering subsides for re-newable energy on the one hand, and on the other missing pollution reduction targets and generally being unable to control general pollution and carbon emissions.
More on this to come. Watch this space.
In completing the start of the project I have visited the provinces of Xinjiang, Ningxia, and Inner Mongolia with more work scheduled in summer 2007.
LINK:
http://archive.ryanpyle.com/my/glbs.aspx?msid=2223&lid=8838703&e=0&p=0
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
China
ryan@ryanpyle.com
www.ryanpyle.com
Skype: ryanpyle
China's increasing energy needs are not slowing down, in fact they are increasing and in doing so they are beginning to catch headlines around the world as investment in oil rich Sudan, Nigeria, Venezuela and Iran are causing western countries to loath China's deep pockets, and their seemingly lack of investment conscience. But that is abroad, at home China is actually pursuing renewable energy, the problem is they haven't done anything to cut back on coal power or heavy industry. And therein lies the heart of the problem; China can develop as much renewable energy as it likes, but without serious policy on stopping the polluting that existing, nothing will really change.
While change is stagnant on the ground, China continues to grasp headlines stating that by 2020 China expects to supply about 10 percent of its energy needs from various forms of renewable energy, meaning: wind, solar, hydro electric and biomass. That is a significant increase given China's miniscule starting point. But more important than statistics and headlines is that Chinese law makers, while avoiding making missed pollution targets a serious offense, have passed a law in February 2006 that formalizes many incentives and clear targets for increased power generation from renewable sources. The most significant section of this new law may indeed be that China's provincial governments will be required by law to purchase a certain percentage of their required electricity from alternative providers, even when the cost is greater.
This law has essentially guaranteed the existence of the renewable energy industry in China, wind and solar power have been the biggest beneficiaries. Wind power farms are being erected throughout China at a dizzying pace and domestic suppliers are rushing in to the industry to supply this need but beware, there is a bottle neck looming. Currently China's antique power grid is incapable of handling this increase in energy production, its grid is incapable of automatically re-routing electricity from one region to another as supply and demand fluctuate. This makes taking full advantage of a large investment in renewable energy almost impossible in the short term.
Although there are barriers China, the country is still home to 16 of the worlds 20 most polluted cities and things must begin to change. Even with all the problems that exist, it's held that China has the most wind power potential of any country in the world, taking into account its inland and offshore sites; and that is enough to get the ball rolling. With that in mind I have begun a long term project on China's push to integrate renewable energy. With this report I will try to show that China is suffering from a multiple personality disorder, by promoting and offering subsides for re-newable energy on the one hand, and on the other missing pollution reduction targets and generally being unable to control general pollution and carbon emissions.
More on this to come. Watch this space.
In completing the start of the project I have visited the provinces of Xinjiang, Ningxia, and Inner Mongolia with more work scheduled in summer 2007.
LINK:
http://archive.ryanpyle.com/my/glbs.aspx?msid=2223&lid=8838703&e=0&p=0
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
China
ryan@ryanpyle.com
www.ryanpyle.com
Skype: ryanpyle
Monday, April 23, 2007
Ryan Pyle Blog: Interview: University of Toronto Magazine
I was recently the subject of a feature for the University of Toronto Magazine. They wanted to do a piece on a former graduate who had gone and done something interesting after graduation. The editor felt my story qualified.
The interview took place via email at the end of march 2007.
I am posting my question and answer session for two reasons: 1) I thought that people who read my blog might have similar questions for me, and this is a nice way for people to learn more about me and my work. 2) I don't know how severe the edit will be when the magazine comes out, and I want people to see my complete replies and the full interview.
Happy reading.
_________________________________________________________________________
University of Toronto Magazine
Questions:
Writer: Scott Anderson
Question 1: How long have you been taking photographs? Did you do any photojournalism while you were attending U of T?
Answer:
I have been actively taking pictures since 2001. It all began when I arrived in China for the first time in the fall of 2001, after graduating from U of T earlier that summer. Before that first trip I had not had any real desire or interest in taking pictures. That trip was my first real experience with photography. Looking back I feel that China, both with its vast size and diversity, has motivated me to pick up the camera and try to tell its stories. Had I traveled to other countries or had other experiences I may not have decided to pursue this career. It is China itself that motivated me, and it is China that has become entirely my focus.
I did absolutely no photojournalism while I was attending U of T. While I was at U of T I played Varsity Basketball, and during those four years I lived in a bubble; which is the way most athletes live while they are in school. You go to class, you go to practice and you go home and study; and if you have any free time you sleep. I endured about four years of that, and while I had some incredible experiences as a basketball player, there wasn’t much of a chance to explore outside of that box I was in. While photography did interest me as a medium of story telling while I was at school, it wasn’t until after graduation and my first experiences abroad that I became interested in picking up a camera and making my first attempts at understanding life through the lens of a camera.
Question 2: Can you give me a quick précis of your career post U of T?
Answer:
Photography can be a painful career to get started in. Essentially photographers are self-employed and most depend on media outlets (magazines / newspapers) to provide us with work. In the early going one can go for months without work, and paychecks are few and far between. My start in this industry was equally brutal. I traveled around China looking for stories, scrapped together enough money to buy cameras and film by teaching English every now and then; I shared apartments with complete strangers and basically had a very difficult first two or three years in the business. In 2004 I made my initial breakthrough with some travel magazines that were interested in features from China. In early 2005 I had my bigger break through when I began to cover China for the New York Times. Based on my work for the NYT I have been able to catch the attention of other magazines and newspapers including Foreign Policy Magazine, Sunday Times Travel, Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times Magazine and Der Spiegel Magazine in Germany.
Question 3: When did you arrive in China? Why did you choose to base yourself there? (Would you call China your base?)
Answer:
I first arrived in China in September 2001. My first trip was one of absolute curiosity. After taking Professor Falkenheim’s Introduction to Modern China class in my second year at U of T I had always been curious about China. After reading a selection of Jonathan Spence’s books and coming to grips with the history, it just seemed like a place I could not afford to miss out on. So in September 2001 I packed my bags and did a three-month solo trip through China. I visited or transited through every province and had some of my most memorable journeys on that first trip; some of which will hopefully be published in a written book sometime soon. After that initial three month trip I returned home for one month, said goodbye to my family and moved to China. It was the toughest decision I have had to make, but my time working in China has been the most rewarding experience of my life.
I may be bias, but I think China is the most interesting country on the planet. I decided to live and work here based mainly on my early experiences in the country when I was traveling. The country is incredibly large and diverse. Each province has its own style of food, its own language dialect and in some cases even its own variations on religion. Actually traveling around China can feel like traveling in six or seven different countries, and some provinces are larger than Western Europe. That coupled by the fact that the country growing so quickly, I knew there would be difficulties or gaps in the advancement that would important to document, and that is what I have spent much of my time and energy working on since my arrival.
Lastly, I wouldn’t call China my base; China is very much my permanent home. Apart from being six feet tall and white, I feel rather well integrated in society. I live in Shanghai and travel from my home there to work on my documentary photography work in other remote parts of the country.
Question 4: What's it like living in China right now? What are the major challenges?
Answer:
Living in China right now is a truly unique experience, it is a country filled with contradictions. Incredible growth and wealth coupled by incredibly poverty and inequality. Walking the streets of Shanghai on the weekends I’ll easily see 50 Mercedes’ Benz and a few Ferraris, all owned by local Chinese who have made their riches navigating the new form of capitalism that exists here. Then after that I can walk in to a small noodle shop and talk with a man who has just lost his job at a state owned factory and doesn’t have enough money to put his child through school. As I mentioned earlier, China’s rush to become a modern state is full of good and bad and there are many growing pains that pop up in the midst of this rapid advancement. These growing pains are what keep me here. They provide me with much of my professional interest.
On a personal level the major challenges with living in China is the noise, air quality and language. The entire country is under construction. Dust fills the air, new highways and apartment blocks are being built on a monthly basis and factories are working overtime to supply the world with manufactured goods. Apart from the noise and the pollution levels I have also found the language to be a difficult barrier to life in China. While my language study does continue progress it is a formidable initial barrier to living and working in China.
On a professional level the major challenges in China are government interference. The Chinese government in Beijing has basically accepted that fact that foreign journalists are going to travel around rural China and unearth corruption, illegal land seizures, AIDS, and pollution. But unfortunately Beijing has little or no control over the provinces, and the harassment by local government officials, local thugs and local police out in the provinces makes working in China difficult from time to time.
Question 5: Many of your photo stories have a political bent: migrant workers, 15th anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre. Does this reflect a personal philosophy or intention? Does it have anything to do with your academic work at U of T?
Answer:
The domestic media in China is not free; in fact there is no freedom of the press in China at any level. This basically means that if it weren’t for foreign journalists, and small handful of very brave local journalists who defy the rules, there would be almost no news about what is really happening in China. Let me try to clarify exactly what I mean. First of all, I am not out on a witch-hunt. China is implementing a lot of great policy as it develops, but with that being said there is also a lot going on beneath the surface that is less flattering and doesn't get reported on in the domestic media.
For example, the world’s biggest shopping mall gets built in China, the domestic media is covering the story and talk about what a great achievement this is for China; but they forget to cover the fact that 100 farmers were kicked off their land to build the shopping mall and those farmers have not been compensated properly, because of government corruption, for their loss of land and loss of future income, and now they are begging in the streets or working manual labor jobs to support their children’s educational fees. That is where the foreign journalists have a responsibility to try to tell the complete story in an objective way.
I focused on the migrant worker story because I thought it was important to look at the effects on farmers as the Three Gorges Dam reservoir as it began to fill. A few million people have had to relocate because of the rising water levels and I wanted to take a look at where were these farmers were ending up and what were they doing. It turns out many of them were living on the streets in big urban centers doing manual labor for US$2 a day.
As for the photo story on the Tiananmen Square, I wanted to look at life in Tiananmen Square 15 years after the government crackdown on student protestors. The images themselves are not very political at all, but when you realize that the government in Beijing has still not yet openly acknowledged that the attacks or massacre even occurred, and that scores of students were killed, the pictures can take on a different meaning.
My academic work at U of T taught me how to think and see issues or stories from different angles, and that is critical to my work today. I graduated with BA as a Politics Specialist in International Politics; and while I am still trying to understand exactly what that means I basically covered classes in Political Theory, Domestic Politics, International Politics, History and Economics. I feel my academic work at U of T prepared me very well for my experiences in China. There are a lot of Machiavellian government officials in rural China at the moment, and having a context to put them in is very helpful.
Question 6: You certainly get around: Iran, Tibet, China, Hong Kong. Do you choose these places or are you sent there on assignment? How do you choose where/what you want to shoot?
Answer:
I would say my work at the moment is about 70/30, about a third of the time I choose where I want to go and the rest of the time I get sent places. The 70% that I get commissioned is great, I know I’ll get an interesting story to work on, I know I’ll get to work with a great writer, there will be an operations budget and I know I’ll get a paycheck at the end of it. The other 30% of the time I find and develop stories on my own, I bankroll them myself and I gamble that at some stage the images and the story will be strong enough that someone out there in the media world will feel, as I do, that this is something important and needs to be published.
When I first started my career I thought it would be exciting to travel around the Middle East, Africa and Asia shooting great assignments for magazines. But I grew out of that pretty quickly, the world is big and I am not interested in trying to photograph everything I see everywhere. In fact all I want to do is document life in China. While I do travel extensively in China, I rarely leave the country and I choose assignments within China over assignments outside of China.
Question 7: Tell me about one of your favorite assignments? Is there one you're most proud of? Which has gotten you the most recognition?
Answer:
I would say that my favorite assignment was also the one I am most proud of and it earned me to most recognition. Let me explain:
I was headed to Anhui province in central China with the New York Times. The objective of the trip was to come out with two strong stories. One story was to cover the poor quality of rural health care in the region and the other was to be on bird flu in China, which was a topic of interest at that time (Nov.2005). Just to put it in context Anhui province is about 500 km west of Shanghai and it is a notoriously corrupt and dodgy place. Not so friendly to foreign visitors looking for a story.
After arriving by plane in the capital Hefei and hiring a driver we were out in to the countryside quickly. Our first task was to find a village in a remote area of the province that was carrying out bird flu vaccinations. A week before we left to do this story the Chinese Government came out and said that they were going to inoculate all of their 14.2 billion birds against bird flu; that sounded a bit fishy. Throughout its history China has embraced the grand scale project to solve “the problem”, while smaller projects with more localization would have been more prudent. Needless to say on the ground things were a mess. We found that un-trained men were inoculating birds using the same needle. That’s right. Several hundred birds were inoculated with the same needle, insuring that any bird that didn’t have bird flu would have a much higher chance by the end of the ordeal. The reason was that the government didn’t give the local county enough money for one needle per bird. Also there was some discrepancy about where the medicine came from and whether or not it was even real, or whether it was actually the medicine suggested by the World Health Organization. After we reported on this and interviewed some of the people involved we were detained by local officials. One of the farmers had called a local official to tell him a bunch of foreigners were snooping around taking pictures. The local officials tried to detain us and take our passports but they didn’t have the authority to do so and we wrote them off and left. Later that night we were detained again after coming back from dinner, the police officers were waiting for us in our hotels rooms. But through all that government interference we were able to come out with a Front Page story for the New York Times, which showed China’s inadequate and disorganized response to this incredibly serious global issue.
The second story was much more personal. It was the story of Jin Guilian. A man who was lying in a bed dying because good health care wasn’t available in his town. The building he was in was said to be a hospital but it was anything but, it was essentially a place people came to die or recover. There was no health care being administered at all. Jin Guilian suffered from a Ventricular Septal Defect, which is a curable heart ailment, but he could not afford to travel to Shanghai to get the treatment he needed and he was dying, and his family was there to comfort him. The idea of the story was to remind people that with all the money being pumped in to China, with the record-breaking height of new office buildings, the new five star hotels and Olympic stadiums being built; hundreds of millions of people in China live without adequate health care. And the story of Jin Guilian was used to emphasize this point. The gap between the rich and poor in China is a potentially destabilizing factor that China needs to take much more seriously. People in the cities are getting rich while those left in the rural regions are falling further behind. The story of Jin Guilian was also Front Page story for the New York Times.
These two stories, and their tough reporting style helped me earn some recognition among photography editors at other magazines and newspapers. It showed that I could approach difficult subjects and produce strong photojournalism stories. The forty-eight hours I spent in Anhui province taught me a lot about life in China, and the experience kind of put me on the map as being a dedicated photojournalist living in China.
Question 8: Why do you take photos? What are you trying to capture in your pictures?
Answer:
This is always a difficult question to answer. I want to take pictures to record a moment in history. I try to walk a fine line between art and journalism, attempting to produce images that are composed in way that makes them pleasing to look at as well as important as a larger part of a story.
I try to capture a moment. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, but if I can capture a still moment amongst the chaos of everyday life that someone can look at and draw some kind of emotion from then I will feel as though I have done my job as a photographer.
Question 9: Who are your best-known clients? Your web site lists New York Times, Foreign Policy Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, Der Spiegel Magazine. You do both corporate and editorial work. Do you have a preference?
Answer:
My best-known client is the New York Times, they have given me a fantastic platform to show my work and develop as a photographer. I also do some corporate work from time to time, large corporations often need images from China for various advertising or internal purposes and I also provide these services. But I much prefer my journalism work, it is much more rewarding and leaves me feeling like I have really accomplished something at the end of the day.
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
China
ryan@ryanpyle.com
www.ryanpyle.com
Skype: ryanpyle
The interview took place via email at the end of march 2007.
I am posting my question and answer session for two reasons: 1) I thought that people who read my blog might have similar questions for me, and this is a nice way for people to learn more about me and my work. 2) I don't know how severe the edit will be when the magazine comes out, and I want people to see my complete replies and the full interview.
Happy reading.
_________________________________________________________________________
University of Toronto Magazine
Questions:
Writer: Scott Anderson
Question 1: How long have you been taking photographs? Did you do any photojournalism while you were attending U of T?
Answer:
I have been actively taking pictures since 2001. It all began when I arrived in China for the first time in the fall of 2001, after graduating from U of T earlier that summer. Before that first trip I had not had any real desire or interest in taking pictures. That trip was my first real experience with photography. Looking back I feel that China, both with its vast size and diversity, has motivated me to pick up the camera and try to tell its stories. Had I traveled to other countries or had other experiences I may not have decided to pursue this career. It is China itself that motivated me, and it is China that has become entirely my focus.
I did absolutely no photojournalism while I was attending U of T. While I was at U of T I played Varsity Basketball, and during those four years I lived in a bubble; which is the way most athletes live while they are in school. You go to class, you go to practice and you go home and study; and if you have any free time you sleep. I endured about four years of that, and while I had some incredible experiences as a basketball player, there wasn’t much of a chance to explore outside of that box I was in. While photography did interest me as a medium of story telling while I was at school, it wasn’t until after graduation and my first experiences abroad that I became interested in picking up a camera and making my first attempts at understanding life through the lens of a camera.
Question 2: Can you give me a quick précis of your career post U of T?
Answer:
Photography can be a painful career to get started in. Essentially photographers are self-employed and most depend on media outlets (magazines / newspapers) to provide us with work. In the early going one can go for months without work, and paychecks are few and far between. My start in this industry was equally brutal. I traveled around China looking for stories, scrapped together enough money to buy cameras and film by teaching English every now and then; I shared apartments with complete strangers and basically had a very difficult first two or three years in the business. In 2004 I made my initial breakthrough with some travel magazines that were interested in features from China. In early 2005 I had my bigger break through when I began to cover China for the New York Times. Based on my work for the NYT I have been able to catch the attention of other magazines and newspapers including Foreign Policy Magazine, Sunday Times Travel, Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times Magazine and Der Spiegel Magazine in Germany.
Question 3: When did you arrive in China? Why did you choose to base yourself there? (Would you call China your base?)
Answer:
I first arrived in China in September 2001. My first trip was one of absolute curiosity. After taking Professor Falkenheim’s Introduction to Modern China class in my second year at U of T I had always been curious about China. After reading a selection of Jonathan Spence’s books and coming to grips with the history, it just seemed like a place I could not afford to miss out on. So in September 2001 I packed my bags and did a three-month solo trip through China. I visited or transited through every province and had some of my most memorable journeys on that first trip; some of which will hopefully be published in a written book sometime soon. After that initial three month trip I returned home for one month, said goodbye to my family and moved to China. It was the toughest decision I have had to make, but my time working in China has been the most rewarding experience of my life.
I may be bias, but I think China is the most interesting country on the planet. I decided to live and work here based mainly on my early experiences in the country when I was traveling. The country is incredibly large and diverse. Each province has its own style of food, its own language dialect and in some cases even its own variations on religion. Actually traveling around China can feel like traveling in six or seven different countries, and some provinces are larger than Western Europe. That coupled by the fact that the country growing so quickly, I knew there would be difficulties or gaps in the advancement that would important to document, and that is what I have spent much of my time and energy working on since my arrival.
Lastly, I wouldn’t call China my base; China is very much my permanent home. Apart from being six feet tall and white, I feel rather well integrated in society. I live in Shanghai and travel from my home there to work on my documentary photography work in other remote parts of the country.
Question 4: What's it like living in China right now? What are the major challenges?
Answer:
Living in China right now is a truly unique experience, it is a country filled with contradictions. Incredible growth and wealth coupled by incredibly poverty and inequality. Walking the streets of Shanghai on the weekends I’ll easily see 50 Mercedes’ Benz and a few Ferraris, all owned by local Chinese who have made their riches navigating the new form of capitalism that exists here. Then after that I can walk in to a small noodle shop and talk with a man who has just lost his job at a state owned factory and doesn’t have enough money to put his child through school. As I mentioned earlier, China’s rush to become a modern state is full of good and bad and there are many growing pains that pop up in the midst of this rapid advancement. These growing pains are what keep me here. They provide me with much of my professional interest.
On a personal level the major challenges with living in China is the noise, air quality and language. The entire country is under construction. Dust fills the air, new highways and apartment blocks are being built on a monthly basis and factories are working overtime to supply the world with manufactured goods. Apart from the noise and the pollution levels I have also found the language to be a difficult barrier to life in China. While my language study does continue progress it is a formidable initial barrier to living and working in China.
On a professional level the major challenges in China are government interference. The Chinese government in Beijing has basically accepted that fact that foreign journalists are going to travel around rural China and unearth corruption, illegal land seizures, AIDS, and pollution. But unfortunately Beijing has little or no control over the provinces, and the harassment by local government officials, local thugs and local police out in the provinces makes working in China difficult from time to time.
Question 5: Many of your photo stories have a political bent: migrant workers, 15th anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre. Does this reflect a personal philosophy or intention? Does it have anything to do with your academic work at U of T?
Answer:
The domestic media in China is not free; in fact there is no freedom of the press in China at any level. This basically means that if it weren’t for foreign journalists, and small handful of very brave local journalists who defy the rules, there would be almost no news about what is really happening in China. Let me try to clarify exactly what I mean. First of all, I am not out on a witch-hunt. China is implementing a lot of great policy as it develops, but with that being said there is also a lot going on beneath the surface that is less flattering and doesn't get reported on in the domestic media.
For example, the world’s biggest shopping mall gets built in China, the domestic media is covering the story and talk about what a great achievement this is for China; but they forget to cover the fact that 100 farmers were kicked off their land to build the shopping mall and those farmers have not been compensated properly, because of government corruption, for their loss of land and loss of future income, and now they are begging in the streets or working manual labor jobs to support their children’s educational fees. That is where the foreign journalists have a responsibility to try to tell the complete story in an objective way.
I focused on the migrant worker story because I thought it was important to look at the effects on farmers as the Three Gorges Dam reservoir as it began to fill. A few million people have had to relocate because of the rising water levels and I wanted to take a look at where were these farmers were ending up and what were they doing. It turns out many of them were living on the streets in big urban centers doing manual labor for US$2 a day.
As for the photo story on the Tiananmen Square, I wanted to look at life in Tiananmen Square 15 years after the government crackdown on student protestors. The images themselves are not very political at all, but when you realize that the government in Beijing has still not yet openly acknowledged that the attacks or massacre even occurred, and that scores of students were killed, the pictures can take on a different meaning.
My academic work at U of T taught me how to think and see issues or stories from different angles, and that is critical to my work today. I graduated with BA as a Politics Specialist in International Politics; and while I am still trying to understand exactly what that means I basically covered classes in Political Theory, Domestic Politics, International Politics, History and Economics. I feel my academic work at U of T prepared me very well for my experiences in China. There are a lot of Machiavellian government officials in rural China at the moment, and having a context to put them in is very helpful.
Question 6: You certainly get around: Iran, Tibet, China, Hong Kong. Do you choose these places or are you sent there on assignment? How do you choose where/what you want to shoot?
Answer:
I would say my work at the moment is about 70/30, about a third of the time I choose where I want to go and the rest of the time I get sent places. The 70% that I get commissioned is great, I know I’ll get an interesting story to work on, I know I’ll get to work with a great writer, there will be an operations budget and I know I’ll get a paycheck at the end of it. The other 30% of the time I find and develop stories on my own, I bankroll them myself and I gamble that at some stage the images and the story will be strong enough that someone out there in the media world will feel, as I do, that this is something important and needs to be published.
When I first started my career I thought it would be exciting to travel around the Middle East, Africa and Asia shooting great assignments for magazines. But I grew out of that pretty quickly, the world is big and I am not interested in trying to photograph everything I see everywhere. In fact all I want to do is document life in China. While I do travel extensively in China, I rarely leave the country and I choose assignments within China over assignments outside of China.
Question 7: Tell me about one of your favorite assignments? Is there one you're most proud of? Which has gotten you the most recognition?
Answer:
I would say that my favorite assignment was also the one I am most proud of and it earned me to most recognition. Let me explain:
I was headed to Anhui province in central China with the New York Times. The objective of the trip was to come out with two strong stories. One story was to cover the poor quality of rural health care in the region and the other was to be on bird flu in China, which was a topic of interest at that time (Nov.2005). Just to put it in context Anhui province is about 500 km west of Shanghai and it is a notoriously corrupt and dodgy place. Not so friendly to foreign visitors looking for a story.
After arriving by plane in the capital Hefei and hiring a driver we were out in to the countryside quickly. Our first task was to find a village in a remote area of the province that was carrying out bird flu vaccinations. A week before we left to do this story the Chinese Government came out and said that they were going to inoculate all of their 14.2 billion birds against bird flu; that sounded a bit fishy. Throughout its history China has embraced the grand scale project to solve “the problem”, while smaller projects with more localization would have been more prudent. Needless to say on the ground things were a mess. We found that un-trained men were inoculating birds using the same needle. That’s right. Several hundred birds were inoculated with the same needle, insuring that any bird that didn’t have bird flu would have a much higher chance by the end of the ordeal. The reason was that the government didn’t give the local county enough money for one needle per bird. Also there was some discrepancy about where the medicine came from and whether or not it was even real, or whether it was actually the medicine suggested by the World Health Organization. After we reported on this and interviewed some of the people involved we were detained by local officials. One of the farmers had called a local official to tell him a bunch of foreigners were snooping around taking pictures. The local officials tried to detain us and take our passports but they didn’t have the authority to do so and we wrote them off and left. Later that night we were detained again after coming back from dinner, the police officers were waiting for us in our hotels rooms. But through all that government interference we were able to come out with a Front Page story for the New York Times, which showed China’s inadequate and disorganized response to this incredibly serious global issue.
The second story was much more personal. It was the story of Jin Guilian. A man who was lying in a bed dying because good health care wasn’t available in his town. The building he was in was said to be a hospital but it was anything but, it was essentially a place people came to die or recover. There was no health care being administered at all. Jin Guilian suffered from a Ventricular Septal Defect, which is a curable heart ailment, but he could not afford to travel to Shanghai to get the treatment he needed and he was dying, and his family was there to comfort him. The idea of the story was to remind people that with all the money being pumped in to China, with the record-breaking height of new office buildings, the new five star hotels and Olympic stadiums being built; hundreds of millions of people in China live without adequate health care. And the story of Jin Guilian was used to emphasize this point. The gap between the rich and poor in China is a potentially destabilizing factor that China needs to take much more seriously. People in the cities are getting rich while those left in the rural regions are falling further behind. The story of Jin Guilian was also Front Page story for the New York Times.
These two stories, and their tough reporting style helped me earn some recognition among photography editors at other magazines and newspapers. It showed that I could approach difficult subjects and produce strong photojournalism stories. The forty-eight hours I spent in Anhui province taught me a lot about life in China, and the experience kind of put me on the map as being a dedicated photojournalist living in China.
Question 8: Why do you take photos? What are you trying to capture in your pictures?
Answer:
This is always a difficult question to answer. I want to take pictures to record a moment in history. I try to walk a fine line between art and journalism, attempting to produce images that are composed in way that makes them pleasing to look at as well as important as a larger part of a story.
I try to capture a moment. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, but if I can capture a still moment amongst the chaos of everyday life that someone can look at and draw some kind of emotion from then I will feel as though I have done my job as a photographer.
Question 9: Who are your best-known clients? Your web site lists New York Times, Foreign Policy Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, Der Spiegel Magazine. You do both corporate and editorial work. Do you have a preference?
Answer:
My best-known client is the New York Times, they have given me a fantastic platform to show my work and develop as a photographer. I also do some corporate work from time to time, large corporations often need images from China for various advertising or internal purposes and I also provide these services. But I much prefer my journalism work, it is much more rewarding and leaves me feeling like I have really accomplished something at the end of the day.
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
China
ryan@ryanpyle.com
www.ryanpyle.com
Skype: ryanpyle
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Ryan Pyle Blog: Nachtwey's TED Talk
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment & Design.
Essentially it's a prize funded by the Sapling Foundation which was funded by a media mogul, you can get the full story here: http://www.ted.com/about/introduction
Every year TED (a US$100,000 prize) is given away to 3 people, or better put, 3 unique story tellers or innovators.
In 2007 James Nachtwey was nominated and was one of the three winners.
If anyone out there takes our profession seriously, I think his acceptance speech is worth watching. But that's just my opinion, and I am known to be highly opinionated.
You can view, via streaming media, or download Nachtwey's acceptance speech at http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/
Like I said, it's well worth a view - and a few minutes of reflection after its finished.
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
China
ryan@ryanpyle.com
www.ryanpyle.com
Skype: ryanpyle
Essentially it's a prize funded by the Sapling Foundation which was funded by a media mogul, you can get the full story here: http://www.ted.com/about/introduction
Every year TED (a US$100,000 prize) is given away to 3 people, or better put, 3 unique story tellers or innovators.
In 2007 James Nachtwey was nominated and was one of the three winners.
If anyone out there takes our profession seriously, I think his acceptance speech is worth watching. But that's just my opinion, and I am known to be highly opinionated.
You can view, via streaming media, or download Nachtwey's acceptance speech at http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/
Like I said, it's well worth a view - and a few minutes of reflection after its finished.
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
China
ryan@ryanpyle.com
www.ryanpyle.com
Skype: ryanpyle
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Ryan Pyle Blog: Brave New World: USA Today's New Day Rate
Good day,
USA Today just introduced its new day rate today, along with its new contract. See below.
My comments: It's an increasingly sad world out there for photographers who believe in working and keeping their own copy write. Big Business is taking over and squeezing the photographers right out of the business. This is essentially because of an increase in the supply of imagery. Digital photography combined with an increase in the sheer number of photographers that exist today have flooded the industry. That is coupled by the massive increase in media outlets and the diversification of advertising budgets among many mediums, no longer just print. Is the end is near? Is the future really this bleak?
The last 10 years has generally seen an increase in the number of photographers working worldwide. And this has essentially been a good development. Because consumers of news see more, understand more and generally more photographers pointing their cameras at more issues is helpful. BUT, I bet you in the next 10 years people will start walking away from the industry completely. With grossly un-favorable contracts being the norm these days, why should someone with a University Education struggle to make US$20,000 a year dealing with editors, who are being squeezed by management, and obscene contracts. In a lot of ways, it just isn't worth the trouble.
The USA Today Contract is below:
_____________________________________________________________
A new USA Today contract increases the day rate for freelance photographers by $100, but in return demands the right to use photos in any medium forever, including USAToday.com and any other Gannett publication.
The action reflects a scramble among newspaper and magazine companies to make their content available in electronic formats, including Web sites and mobile devices. But as part of the change, Gannett is asking freelancers to green-light the use of their images in any of the 90 newspapers, 23 TV stations, 130 Web sites and hundreds of other publications the publishing giant owns.
"Our new agreement reflects the multiplatform world," says Frank Folwell, the deputy managing editor who oversees photography and graphics at USA Today. "Newspaper companies are media companies now. We have to proceed for the future....We tried to put together an agreement as fairly as we could."
Among the publishers who have made similar changes to their contributor contracts this year is Nielsen Business Media, owner of PDN.
Some photographers have already responded sourly to the USA Today contract. "I would not sign it," says Mark Loundy, a photojournalist and multimedia editor who has seen both the old and new contracts. He says USA Today is taking a "major step backwards," adding, "The publishing industry wants the control they get with full time staffers without giving them job security or benefits."
Photographers who debated the new contract on a SportsShooter.com message board weighed the downside of a "rights grab" against the upside of the improved day rate, which compares favorably to other newspapers.
However, because of a reduction in other fees, the new day rate may be less of a benefit than it seems.
The new contract, which went into effect April 1, pays a day rate of $375, up from $275. The old contract also paid a $100 transmission fee for up to six digital images plus $10 for each additional image, but that fee has been reduced to a flat $25 in the new contract.
Under the old terms, USA Today paid freelancers an extra $100 when their photos ran on USAToday.com and between $50 and $200 each time a photo was reprinted in the newspaper. The new contract pays no extra fees for online use or print reuse.
As before, freelancers retain the copyrights to their photos and can license them to someone else after a period of exclusivity. The old contract asked for 60 days of exclusivity while the new contract lowers that period to 30 days.
Here is the most significant language added to the new contract for assigned freelance photography:
"You grant USA TODAY, Gannett Co., Inc., and their respective affiliated companies and licensees the right to reproduce, distribute, display, alter, retouch, adapt, modify, transmit, edit, crop and otherwise use and reuse the Works for any purpose and in any manner or medium throughout the world in perpetuity without additional compensation in connection with any publication, website, television station broadcast, or other product or service offered, operated and/or owned by a Gannett Entity. For the purposes of this Agreement, a 'Gannett Entity' means Gannett Co. Inc., USA TODAY, and their respective subsidiaries, affiliates, and affiliated companies, including, but not limited to, their publications, websites and television stations."
____________________________________________________________
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
China
ryan@ryanpyle.com
www.ryanpyle.com
Skype: ryanpyle
USA Today just introduced its new day rate today, along with its new contract. See below.
My comments: It's an increasingly sad world out there for photographers who believe in working and keeping their own copy write. Big Business is taking over and squeezing the photographers right out of the business. This is essentially because of an increase in the supply of imagery. Digital photography combined with an increase in the sheer number of photographers that exist today have flooded the industry. That is coupled by the massive increase in media outlets and the diversification of advertising budgets among many mediums, no longer just print. Is the end is near? Is the future really this bleak?
The last 10 years has generally seen an increase in the number of photographers working worldwide. And this has essentially been a good development. Because consumers of news see more, understand more and generally more photographers pointing their cameras at more issues is helpful. BUT, I bet you in the next 10 years people will start walking away from the industry completely. With grossly un-favorable contracts being the norm these days, why should someone with a University Education struggle to make US$20,000 a year dealing with editors, who are being squeezed by management, and obscene contracts. In a lot of ways, it just isn't worth the trouble.
The USA Today Contract is below:
_____________________________________________________________
A new USA Today contract increases the day rate for freelance photographers by $100, but in return demands the right to use photos in any medium forever, including USAToday.com and any other Gannett publication.
The action reflects a scramble among newspaper and magazine companies to make their content available in electronic formats, including Web sites and mobile devices. But as part of the change, Gannett is asking freelancers to green-light the use of their images in any of the 90 newspapers, 23 TV stations, 130 Web sites and hundreds of other publications the publishing giant owns.
"Our new agreement reflects the multiplatform world," says Frank Folwell, the deputy managing editor who oversees photography and graphics at USA Today. "Newspaper companies are media companies now. We have to proceed for the future....We tried to put together an agreement as fairly as we could."
Among the publishers who have made similar changes to their contributor contracts this year is Nielsen Business Media, owner of PDN.
Some photographers have already responded sourly to the USA Today contract. "I would not sign it," says Mark Loundy, a photojournalist and multimedia editor who has seen both the old and new contracts. He says USA Today is taking a "major step backwards," adding, "The publishing industry wants the control they get with full time staffers without giving them job security or benefits."
Photographers who debated the new contract on a SportsShooter.com message board weighed the downside of a "rights grab" against the upside of the improved day rate, which compares favorably to other newspapers.
However, because of a reduction in other fees, the new day rate may be less of a benefit than it seems.
The new contract, which went into effect April 1, pays a day rate of $375, up from $275. The old contract also paid a $100 transmission fee for up to six digital images plus $10 for each additional image, but that fee has been reduced to a flat $25 in the new contract.
Under the old terms, USA Today paid freelancers an extra $100 when their photos ran on USAToday.com and between $50 and $200 each time a photo was reprinted in the newspaper. The new contract pays no extra fees for online use or print reuse.
As before, freelancers retain the copyrights to their photos and can license them to someone else after a period of exclusivity. The old contract asked for 60 days of exclusivity while the new contract lowers that period to 30 days.
Here is the most significant language added to the new contract for assigned freelance photography:
"You grant USA TODAY, Gannett Co., Inc., and their respective affiliated companies and licensees the right to reproduce, distribute, display, alter, retouch, adapt, modify, transmit, edit, crop and otherwise use and reuse the Works for any purpose and in any manner or medium throughout the world in perpetuity without additional compensation in connection with any publication, website, television station broadcast, or other product or service offered, operated and/or owned by a Gannett Entity. For the purposes of this Agreement, a 'Gannett Entity' means Gannett Co. Inc., USA TODAY, and their respective subsidiaries, affiliates, and affiliated companies, including, but not limited to, their publications, websites and television stations."
____________________________________________________________
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
China
ryan@ryanpyle.com
www.ryanpyle.com
Skype: ryanpyle
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