Ryan Pyle Blog: The China Fix

Hello,

Every now and then you read something that completely captures the moment. It's not just a case of great journalism but also a case of vast experience, knowledge and the canny ability to step back from a situation and see it clearly and objectively. Below is just such a piece of writing.

The timing is important because Google have called out China and support from other tech companies is thin. Few are willing to stand up against what many consider a harder stance and more threatening business environment in China. James writes with an openness, an honesty and with two decades of China business experience. Please read below:

Online LINK: The China Fix

Copywrite: James McGregor
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Monday, Feb. 01, 2010
The China Fix
By James McGregor

In my more than two decades in China, I have seldom seen the foreign business community more angry and disillusioned than it is today. Such sentiment goes beyond the Internet censorship and cyberspying that led to Google's Jan. 12 threat to bail out of China, or the clash of values (freedom vs. control) implied by the Google case. It is about the perception that antiforeign attitudes and policies in China have been growing and hardening since the global economic crisis pushed the U.S. and Europe into a tailspin and launched China to its very uncomfortable stardom on the world stage. (Read "Google Ends Policy of Self-Censorship in China.")

Visiting CEOs' banquet-table chatter is now dominated by swapping tales of arrogant and insolent Chinese bureaucrats and business partners. The litany includes purposefully inconsistent and nontransparent enforcement of regulations, rampant intellectual-property theft, state penetration of multinationals through union and Communist Party organizations, blatant market impediments through rigged product standards and testing, politicized courts and agencies that almost always favor local companies, creative and selective enforcement of WTO requirements ... The list goes on. (See "Google Earth Adds Historical Photos.")

The foreign business community in China has deep respect and affection for the Chinese people and their hard-earned success. But more than a few foreign business leaders are asking themselves if they have been bamboozled by the system. Multinationals have been solid citizens in China, handing over heaps of capital, technology, training, source code, best practices and proprietary products to joint-venture partners they were forced into bed with. They have funded schools, orphanages, disaster reconstruction, overseas scholarships and all manner of poverty-alleviation programs. But now that the China market matters more to them, it appears that China couldn't care less. Increasingly difficult China-market access is the immediate worry. But many are looking ahead and losing sleep over expectations that their onetime partners are morphing into predators — and that their own technology and know-how will be coming back at them globally in the form of cut-price products from subsidized state-owned behemoths.

At the same time, I have also seldom seen the Chinese government and business community more unsettled and uncertain. Theirs is an arrogance borne of insecurity. The global financial chaos and China's rocketing global status threw off the meticulous national development schedules carefully crafted by the risk-averse and surprise-allergic engineers who run the Party. (See the top 10 Google Earth finds.)

The pressures on Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao are overwhelming. They are white-knuckling their way through their final two years in office, focusing on 8% or higher growth and crushing any dissent that could derail it. The Chinese people are generally pretty happy, but the Party leadership is terrified of their outsized expectations. People under age 40, the progeny of the one-child policy, didn't live through Maoist poverty and upheaval. They are pampered, impatient and demanding. They consider exponential growth as a basic benchmark of life, and access to information to be a civil right. China's rich are powerful opponents of further reform and opening. They made money the local way and are determined to block foreign competition so this can continue.

In their spare time, China's leaders are reaching under the carpet to tackle the country's endemic corruption, epidemic pollution, emaciated health care, shredded social services, entrenched industrial overcapacity and swiftly aging population, to name a few. They have little remaining bandwidth, and no experience or desire to be the visionary and magnanimous world leaders who can look beyond China's own often desperate needs that the world wants them to be.

So both Chinese and non-Chinese have legitimate challenges and understandable phobias. Google is just a proxy in this intensifying dispute. It's really about rebalancing the economic and political dynamic between China and the developed world, with the U.S. as the key negotiator for the West. It won't be easy. China and the U.S. are past masters at blaming their domestic policy failings on outsiders. Finger-pointing politicians and chest-beating nationalists in the two nations will make rational discussion nearly impossible. Yet it is time for leaders on both sides of the Pacific to lift their heads above overwhelming domestic concerns and fix China's deteriorating relationship with foreign business and the developed world before things get out of control. One thing's certain: they won't find the answers through Google.

**McGregor, a senior counselor for APCO Worldwide, is a former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China and author of One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China
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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: Blogging in 2009

Hello.

This is another one of those boring blogs that looks back at 2009. This time we are looking at my blogging.

To be honest I've been blogging since 2006. But I would have to say that in 2009 I finally got my feet moving and began blogging on a regular basis. I had a total of 102 blogs in 2009. That is a vast improvement over 2008 (22 blogs), 2007 (14 blogs) and 2006 (13 blogs).

So I'm blogging, most of it is rubbish but I hope there are a few entertaining gems in there somewhere. Needless to say 102 blogs in one year is a pretty aggressive number for a single blogger who tries to focus on original content. Many of my blogs are short and introduce new work, and when feeling motivated I try to branch out and write something longer and more opinionated.

My goal is that 2010 will bring a similar number of blogs to the viewing public. I seem to have settled in to a nice routine of 1 or 2 blogs a week, focusing more on quality than quantity. Fingers crossed it all comes together nicely. I appreciate that there is at least some people who enjoy the regular read, and your emails and feedback are very much welcomed. Please continue to write and I'll try to reply to everyone on questions regarding photography and China in general.

Keep reading, and tell all your friends.

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: Newsweek "Year in Images"

Hello.

I'm very honored to have been included in 2009's edition of Newsweek's "The Year in Images" issue. It's always nice to have your work recognized and it's even nicer to have one of your images published as a defining image of the year. I'm very proud to have a strong relationship with Newsweek. They've been very supportive of my work in China and I've throughly enjoyed my collaboration with their editors on every occasion.

The image chosen, see above, was of the BaLing Bridge. The bridge is a massive suspension bridge in rural China that is set to help connect the Southwestern cities of Guiyang and Kunming, two relative backwaters that could very well be at the forefront of China's next round of powerful economic growth.

The image was used, by Newsweek, as an example of China's stimulus package of USD 585 billion - which mainly went to infrastructure projects like this one. While the bridge was obviously planned, and construction had begun, well before the financial crisis it is nonetheless a symbol of China's commitment to connecting the countryside with the wealth and business opportunities enjoyed in coastal cities and provinces.

I'm not an economist, but I guess if China keeps spending on infrastructure and helping more businesses tap cheap land and labor further inland even more rural residents will be lifted from poverty and China's industrial revolution could very well continue for another decade or more. Fingers crossed these infrastructure projects get used and help deliver real progress and improvement in people's lives. China doesn't have much more room for anymore "white elephants".

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: BBC News / 20 Years in Pictures

Hello.

How vain are you? How often to do you "Google" your name? Honestly?

Sadly, I do it often. My reasoning might surprise you. I don't get any emotional boost from seeing how many google pages my name appears in; but I've found it an excellent way to see how my work is being used online. So each month I spend a bit of time, less than an hour, trolling through websites in which my name or pictures appear.

Often I am pleasantly surprised. For example Corbis put together a 12 picture slide show of the most commanding news photographs from the last 20 years in September 2009. The BBC News website ran the slide show and I'm very honored that one of my images from the Sichuan Earthquake in 2008 was included. Sadly I only figured it out by doing a Google search for my name in late December.

BBC News 20 Years of Photographs

The image include, see above, is of a woman who had lost her son in the collapse of a Middle School in Juyuan, Sichuan; about an hours drive from the provincial capital city of Chengdu. That shot was one of the toughest I've ever taken. The woman was hysterical and the moment was emotional. Some have said that images like this one are a gross violation of privacy, but I feel my images, and others like it, are an important documentation of history. The Chinese government has never fully answered questions about why schools collapsed in such great numbers. Families have been torn apart from shoddy construction, and sadly there is no one honest enough to take the blame or even admit that corruption in the construction of these schools was widely to blame. I was there, I was able to bend rebar (the steel wires that hold concrete in place) with my bare hands; clearly no match for a strong earthquake.

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: 2009 Travel Days

Hello.

I like to look back. I like to reflect, and then I like to learn, and move forwards. So over the next few weeks you might see a few blogs in which I reflect back on the difficult and exciting year of 2009. The first blog in this series deals with Travel Days.

I'm a bit of a loser, if that seems harsh then a geek at the very least. I like to keep track of my travel days each year. And 2009 was a monster of a year for travel; at least a monster by my standards. Let's look at the stats.

There were 365 days in 2009. And of those there were roughly 260 work days, meaning generally Monday to Friday, excluding holidays.

Somehow, I logged 141 nights in hotels or around 141 travel days and some 70 plane flights.

Now it would be wrong to assume that all of this was work where I traveled to a location and too pictures, but I can tell you that more than 80% of exactly that.

Work, and rest, took me to cities as diverse as: Shenzhen, Kashgar, Shaoxing, Hong Kong, Toronto, Changsha, Tianjin, Urumqi, Milan, Paris, Dongguan, Chengdu, Xi'an, Beijing, Halifax, New York, Guiyang, London, Taiyuan, Pingyao, Haikou, Sanya, Korle, Lhasa and finally Singapore.

That's a serious bit of travel. I didn't keep statistics for 2008 but I'll be sure to keep my numbers for 2010. Should be an interesting comparison.

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: Internet Porn Crackdown

Hello.

China continues to wage war against the internet. Recent reports indicated that some 5,394 people have been arrested in an Internet Porn Crackdown. This latest round of arrests is, apparently, an effort to protect the emotional health of children.

I find this strange given the fact that I can walk about 20 meters from my house (in a nice part of town) and find a massage parlor offering prostitution, and 90% of the hotels I stay in when I travel in China pester me with phone calls at 10pm asking me if I'd like some sex for the evening. With AIDs running rampant and the divorce rate well above 50%, I'm glad the government focusing on internet porn. God knows it would be embarrassing if someone wrote an article claiming that prostitution is the largest profession amongst Chinese women.

In any event, the 5,394 arrests represents a 400% increase over the number of arrests in 2008. Clearly a message by the ever-powerful to play by the rules. And what are the rules? Well, that's a good question. Seems that a whole bunch of bloggers got caught up in the mix and porn is becoming a scapegoat for arresting anyone doing anything the government doesn't like online; like blogging about politics for example.

Maybe I'll get arrested for distributing internet porn over my blog, but instead of actual porn it'll just be pictures of young Chinese males (fully clothed) using computers, see above, and some highly opinionated text.

As China is set to become the world's largest economy sometime in the next 20 years, somewhere, somehow the world has to ask itself; are we really prepared to play by China's rules when they start dictating global policy? China's war on the internet is already going global as China as demanded that all international and domestic websites that wish to be viewed in China must register first with the Propaganda department, or else risk being blocked. Upwards and onwards.

I've got a front row seat to China's war on the internet. Exciting times.
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Copywrite: Reuters: LINK: CLICK HERE

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police arrested thousands in a drive against Internet pornography throughout 2009, officials said, vowing a deepening crackdown that critics say is being used to tighten overall censorship.

The Chinese government has run a highly publicised campaign against what officials said were banned smutty and lewd pictures overwhelming the country's Internet and threatening the emotional health of children.

Chinese police said late on Thursday the crackdown on Internet pornography had brought 5,394 arrests and 4,186 criminal case investigations in 2009 -- a fourfold increase in the number of such cases compared with 2008.

The announcement on the Ministry of Public Security's website (www.mps.gov.cn) said the drive would deepen in 2010.

Police would "intensify punishments for Internet operations that violate laws and regulations", said the statement from the ministry's Internet security section.

"Strengthen monitoring of information," it urged, "Press Internet service providers to put in place preventive technology."

With an estimated 360 million Internet users, China has a bigger online population than any other country. But the ruling Communist Party worries the Internet could become a dangerous conduit for threatening images and ideas.

The ministry did not say how many of the 5,394 suspects arrested were later charged, released or prosecuted.

The anti-pornography drive has also netted many sites with politically sensitive or even simply user-generated content, in what some see as an effort by the government to reassert control over new media.

China has banned a number of popular websites and Internet services, including Google's Youtube, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook, as well as Chinese content sharing sites.
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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: New Work – Golf on Hainan Island

Hello,

I recently completed a story for the Financial Times Magazine on a secretive golf course on China’s Hainan Island. The island is developing at hyper speed and government officials are touting the island as a future competitor to Hawaii. Five star hotels and international quality golf courses can be found just about everywhere on Hainan Island.

Dan Washburn wrote a wonderful story and he has been knee deep in golf stories over the last few years. He is even preparing a book on golf and golf development in China. Follow the link below for the story.

FT LINK: Click Here

Article Below:
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Copywrite: Dan Washburn

Golf’s secret boom in Hainan, China
By Dan Washburn

If you are flying into Haikou from the west, you can see it. Sit on the right-hand side of the aircraft and look out of your window. It’s there. Viewed from above, this vast swathe of land may not look like much – fuzzy green vegetation, shadowy pockets of volcanic rock, incongruous veins of reddish brown soil – but in a couple of years it will make history. Locals refer to this area by its code name: Project 791. Soon, most people will know it as Mission Hills Hainan, the largest collection of golf courses in the world.

The scope of the multi-billion-dollar project is staggering. It occupies 80sq km of forest and shrubland – an area the size of Hong Kong island – in north-east Hainan, the island province long touted as China’s answer to Hawaii. Once completed, it will feature 22 golf courses, at a stroke doubling the number on Hainan today. It’s been in the works since 2006 and for more than two years, thousands of workers have been clearing trees, moving soil, building greens, fairways, clubhouses and luxury hotels.

And yet aspects of the project remain as mysterious as the island on which it sits. In fact, the man most closely connected to the Mission Hills venture in Hainan denies its very existence.

When I first met Ken Chu, vice-chairman of Mission Hills Group and one of the most powerful men in China’s burgeoning golf industry, I was wearing yellow plastic bags over my shoes. Our interview was to take place in an $11m villa, one of the many that line the fairways at Mission Hills Golf Club in Shenzhen, the Chinese business hub north of Hong Kong. I was told that everyone who entered the show home must don the protective shoe coverings. Shuffling past a white grand piano I took a seat in a living room whose styling might best be described as neo-Liberace. When Chu arrived, the first thing I noticed was his shoes – stylish, black, leather and uncovered. I stood up to greet the 35-year-old mogul and cheap plastic crackled beneath my feet.

For now, Mission Hills Shenzhen touts itself as the “World’s No. 1”, and Guinness World Records plays along, labelling the 20sq km, 12-course golf club the largest on the planet, even though Nanshan International Golf Club in north-eastern China has 63 more holes. Opened in 1994 by Chu’s billionaire father, Hong Kong businessman David Chu, this is golf on steroids. Each of the 12 courses was designed by one of the biggest names in the sport, from Faldo to Nicklaus to Norman. Mission Hills Shenzhen also features the world’s largest clubhouse, Asia’s largest spa and, for good measure, the continent’s largest tennis centre.

Towards the end of our meeting, I brought up Hainan. I asked Chu how many courses Mission Hills had planned there. It was the first time I saw him flustered. “We, um, it’s not so much on the course development,” he stumbled. “Actually, we haven’t even started. We haven’t even talked about this project. It’s something in the pipeline, in discussion, but it’s not purely on golf. It’s a tourist destination.”

“So, it’s just too early to say anything?” I asked. “Maybe at this stage,” Chu said, “because there’s nothing to talk about.”

This was in July last year. When I travelled to Hainan in August, I discovered that not only was there something worth talking about, but a large part of the project was nearing completion. Six golf courses had been shaped and seeded. Three more – including the showpiece “tournament course” – were even further along. They looked perfectly playable, lush and green, with local women in rattan hats the shape of Tiffany lampshades putting the finishing touches to the white-sand bunkers.

The tournament course is stunning. With its irregular lines and eroded sand traps, it manages to appear rugged and natural, even though there is little natural about it. Incorporated into the design are old, overgrown lava-rock walls and archways left over from the land’s previous occupants, along with some mature lychee, ficus and acacia trees that managed to elude the clear-cutter. The result is a landscape that looks like it has been there for decades, maybe centuries, not months. A drive along the cart path, made from crushed lava rock, has the flavour of a Jurassic safari – that is, until you see the massive hotel and clubhouse looming on the horizon.

It is all remarkably telegenic, and by design. The talk is that in 2011 the Mission Hills Hainan tournament course will become the new location for either golf’s Omega-sponsored World Cup, currently a fixture at Mission Hills Shenzhen, or of the HSBC Champions, the tournament dubbed “Asia’s Major”. That event, with $7m in prize money, draws some of the biggest names in the sport and has been held in Shanghai since its launch in 2005. Professional Golf Association representatives, I was told, have toured Mission Hills Hainan. And Ken Chu flies in every two weeks to monitor progress on the project.

The moans of bullfrogs emanating from the marshland along the 18th fairway are replaced by the ping ping of hammers hitting metal. Chain-smoking labourers, skin brown and weathered by the tropical sun, plug away at the two dramatic structures that form the backdrop to the course’s closing hole. Fashioned in Mediterranean Revival style, they are white with red and black tile roofs.

In reality, this will be the world’s only self-contained golf city. Its 22 courses will cover every style imaginable – from links to desert to Augusta-like perfection – and include some decidedly non-traditional designs. Picture yourself playing into a waterfall, through a cave, around a volcano, or over a replica of the Great Wall. There will be multiple town centres with luxury homes and apartments, hotels and spas, shopping malls and streets lined with restaurants and bars. The Chus are turning countryside into suburbia, no doubt raising surrounding property values and creating thousands of jobs along the way.

But why the reticence when I inquired about the Hainan development? Why does a golf project require a code name? There is a one-word answer to such questions: China. The country’s latest moratorium on golf course construction was brought in more than five years ago, and is still technically in place. In China, golf remains a prohibitively expensive, elitist pursuit – inescapably linked to corruption in the minds of many – and, some believe, its expansion runs counter to several of President Hu Jintao’s primary concerns: among them the environment, the plight of farmers and the widening gap between rich and poor. A project that absorbs 20 million acres of open land and directly affects the lives of tens of thousands of poor rural families is bound to create controversy. For Mission Hills, for now, the less fanfare the better.

Given all that, how could such an audacious project get the go-ahead? Why would someone even consider trying to open a golf club nearly one-and-a-half times the size of Manhattan? And how could construction go virtually unnoticed and unreported for more than a year? There’s an answer to these questions, too, and it is also China. In the years since the government announced its supposed golf course moratorium, the number of courses has nearly trebled to an estimated 600 or so. In China, there is always a way.

And that is especially true in Hainan, where golf is now viewed as a vital part of the province’s development. When modern China’s first golf course opened in 1984, Hainan was four years away from becoming a fully-fledged province, and most mainland Chinese still regarded it with equal parts curiosity and fear. Despite its proximity to the mainland – Haikou, Hainan’s capital, lies just 30km from the southern tip of Guangdong province – for centuries it had been characterised as a typhoon-prone outpost inhabited by mysterious natives, ruthless pirates, banished criminals and exiled officials. Indeed, prior to his expulsion to Hainan in 848, disgraced Tang Dynasty chief minister Li Deyu famously wrote that he was being sent to the “gate of hell”.

The reputation stuck. One Hainan local said that when he arrived on the mainland in the 1980s to attend university, his fellow students were surprised to discover he didn’t have a tail. But it was also during this decade of reform that top-ranking officials began referring to Hainan as China’s “treasure island”, both for its rich natural resources and its sun-blessed, palm-lined beaches. Though poor, backward and corrupt, Hainan had potential, but it seemed no one could agree for what.

As China’s middle class continued to grow, its appeal as a tourist destination came to the fore. And last year, after decades of false starts, the provincial government announced plans to make tourism the “pillar” of the local economy, to rival destinations such as Phuket and Bali. Golf, once banned by the communists as bourgeois, is expected to play a big role in this repositioning. At last count, Hainan – slightly bigger than Belgium – had 22 courses, although many people believe it could easily reach 100 within five years.

While a negligible percentage of the population plays golf, China is one of the few places in the world where golf course construction is booming. “Everyone who is even thinking about golf course design is here in China,” said Haikou-based Richard Mon, vice-president of China operations for Schmidt-Curley Golf Design, the US company behind all 34 of Mission Hills’ China courses. “If you’re not, you don’t have any work. Everywhere else in the world is done.” Golf in modern China is in its infancy – the game here is still four years younger than Sergio Garcia – and the speed of its growth will no doubt be accelerated by its inclusion in the 2016 Olympics, a move that should give the sport some legitimacy in the eyes of the once-sceptical Chinese government.

What’s less certain, though, is whether the provision of 100 golf courses – let alone the 200 to 300 touted by one provincial official – makes sense on Hainan, an island with 8.5 million predominately rural inhabitants, only about 3,000 of whom play. While most Hainan courses are fully booked during the winter peak tourist season, the insufferable heat and relentless rains of summer keep away all but the most dedicated or frugal (greens fees are often heavily discounted during the quiet months). The struggling global economy has also taken a toll on business.

But such quibbles may be missing the larger truth about golf course development in Hainan, and throughout much of China: the number of golf courses built has very little to do with the number of golfers available to play on them. With few exceptions, golf courses exist to help sell luxury villas. Developers do not worry if a course sits empty, as long as the properties around it sell. And so far in Hainan, selling homes has not been a problem. Wealthy bosses from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and central China’s coal belt fly in and buy up the villas, sometimes several at a time, often paying in cash. In China, to own a home on a golf course does not necessarily mean you play the game. It’s more about prestige. Golf, like luxury sedans and handbags, is just another way to project your wealth.

During the planning and proposal stage, however, golf is rarely mentioned. That is how developers get around the supposed national moratorium on building courses. “No one calls it a golf course now,” one industry insider told me. “Instead, it’s a green space or it’s equestrian or it’s an exercise field. They are creative. But the government knows. It’s just all about loopholes.”

For example, in 2008 the China Youth Daily reported that the word “golf” does not appear in Mission Hills’ agreement with the local government to develop in Hainan. According to the newspaper, the document describes a “land consolidation” project that will “improve the production and living standards of the local farmers and promote the building of a new socialist countryside”.

Hainan bills itself as China’s greenest province, and in many ways it is the tropical paradise it is touted to be, a literal breath of fresh air for those travelling in from the mainland. But the past several decades of property development and slash-and-burn agriculture have taken their toll on the island’s ecology. Like many current golf projects on Hainan, the Mission Hills development primarily occupies acreage that the government has classified as huangdi, or “wasteland”. But this only means that the land was either never used by man or is no longer used by man. It doesn’t take into account its ecological merits. “If they only build on true wasteland, then there is no problem,” said one conservationist active in Hainan. “To me, the [Mission Hills] area next to Haikou is not a wasteland. In Hong Kong, that would be a country park, a very nice forest or wilderness park.”

This northern section of the Mission Hills land is less than 30 minutes by car from downtown Haikou and just east of a 108sq km national geological park built around the crater of an extinct volcano. Both properties occupy a region long known as the “lung of Haikou” for its green landscape and fresh air. Nearly three years ago, a Haikou-based pressure group believed it had secured around 825 acres of this land to establish a forest park that would help promote environmental awareness. Its members worked on the project for two years, winning the support of the government, attracting investors and brokering a land deal with local villagers. But suddenly in 2007, the villagers ended talks. And that is when the group’s organisers first heard about Project 791.

“They didn’t even notify us,” a member of the group told me over a pot of Pu’er tea. “The government just told the villagers not to work with us any more. All the years working, the money, the energy, all wasted. It was a devastating hit. It broke our hearts, and we felt so small and insignificant. We knew we could never defeat them. How can you go against the government?” The group was warned not to do anything that might disrupt the Mission Hills project. In Hainan, a domestic non-governmental organisation is never truly non-governmental. A good relationship with the authorities is necessary for survival, and going up against golf, an industry thought to be lining the pockets of many a government official, would not be a wise move. At the Mission Hills site, one completed fairway has already been dubbed the “government hole” due to its popularity with local officials.

The lobby group member did not attempt to hide his frustration. “They call this ecological restoration?” he asked incredulously. “Sure, they might plant a few trees – but they also destroyed a mountain and turned it into a lake.” Ah yes, the mountain. It’s true that while certain species of tree and shrub thrive on this volcanic landscape, the rocky earth is not suitable for most forms of farming. It is also not suitable for building and shaping golf courses, which require a couple of metres of topsoil. The solution? Mission Hills bought a “mountain” several kilometres from the construction site and started digging – until the mountain was a hole in the ground. A wagon train of trucks carted the red earth to the construction site, where it is stored in a huge flat pile that looks like an Arizona plateau.

Like environmental protection, land ownership in rural Hainan is a particularly murky issue. Last year, in a town called Longqiao, villagers protested after discovering the great disparity between what Mission Hills had paid the local government for their land and the amount passed on to them. Some demonstrators flipped a government car, and military police were called in to disperse the crowd. Such public expressions of displeasure are often the only recourse for disgruntled villagers, who usually have no official documents to back up their claim to a piece of land. All they can do is yell – or congregate on fairways brandishing their sickles.

Villagers, told that developers are merely renting their land for 50 years, see through the ruse and view this as their only opportunity to cash in. It happens throughout Hainan. At one course site I visited, locals had hastily built new homes in the construction zone in an effort to claim larger payouts. At another site, where villagers were being compensated for each grave that had to be moved, fresh ones began appearing every morning. Construction on the Mission Hills project was halted for several months in 2008 due to land disputes, and various dust-ups have caused the site’s boundaries to change more than a hundred times since the planning process began.

I spent two days hiking through villages around the Mission Hills site, trying to gauge the mood of the locals, who by and large were warm and friendly, quick to invite a stranger indoors or under a shady tree for a cup of tea or a piece of jackfruit. Most lived in hamlets laid out in maze-like fashion, with narrow stone paths weaving between single-storey, centuries-old homes, with walls of irregularly shaped pieces of lava rock and tiled roofs. More and more villagers are doing away with these old buildings, however, opting instead to use the money they have made by selling land to Mission Hills to build larger, multi-storey homes out of brick or cinder block.

Near the perimeter of the golf site, I met Ma Jiguang, who two days earlier had opened a small shop a hundred yards from where labourers were building high-rise dormitories that would eventually house thousands of Mission Hills employees. Behind his one-room cement structure, the 37-year-old Ma had built a brick wall to mark where he felt his property ended and Mission Hills began. Other than his home back in the village, this was the only piece of land he had left.

“We had fruit trees, so I didn’t want to sell,” Ma said, as weary-looking workers wandered into his shop in search of cold water and beer. “But they had already claimed it and measured it. What could I do? The government tells you the price and no matter if you are willing to sell or not, they take your land anyway. As an ordinary citizen, how can you fight the government officials?”

Ma, like many I spoke to, said that despite the area’s designation as wasteland, the nutrient-rich volcanic soil was ideal for cultivating fruit trees. The region’s lychees were particularly famous and could fetch a good price at market. In all, Ma gave up 10 mu (a Chinese unit of measurement equal to roughly one-sixth of an acre) to the Mission Hills project and the government paid him around RMB200,000 (£18,000), a very large sum for the average Chinese farmer. But Ma knew that his land was worth more – Mission Hills, he claimed, paid the government five times what he had received for it – and he wasn’t sure how he’d earn a living in the future without his orchard. Although some villagers were happy to sell because their land was rocky, Ma told me of one of his friends who had protested and refused. The next day, he claimed, soldiers had arrived at his friend’s property and bulldozed his trees.

A car pulled up on the dirt patch in front of Ma’s store. In walked a man in white shorts, a white golf shirt and flip-flops. It was Ma’s cousin, Li Guanghua, a town-level government official. He assured me that Mission Hills Hainan was going to be bigger and better than the one in Shenzhen. “I have been to the Mission Hills in Shenzhen,” Li announced proudly. He and about 100 other town and village representatives had travelled there on a week-long expenses-paid trip before the land deals had been finalised.

“Do you want to have a look inside?” Li asked, gesturing towards the Mission Hills property. “I’d love to,” I said. “But will we be able to get past security? I hear it’s pretty tight.” Li looked insulted. “Who can stop me?” he scoffed. “Who can stop the government’s car?”

Alice Liu contributed to this story. Some names have been changed to protect identities. Dan Washburn is a Shanghai-based writer.
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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: The Rebuilding of Kashgar

Hello.

Happy New Year folks. I recently wrote a small story for the Digital Journalist. The un-edited text is below. The link to the Digital Journalist feature can be found by clicking the link at the bottom.
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The Rebuilding of Kashgar
By: Ryan Pyle

As a photographer, and a visually sensitive human being, I find it difficult to watch historic architecture of Kashgar, China vanish before my eyes. And this essentially means that all my visits to photograph this ancient oasis town are simultaneously incredibly pleasing and excruciatingly painful. Each time I return something is missing: a market, a pit full of blacksmiths, or a small local mosque. I have to some times force myself to remember to take pictures of everything I see, photojournalism aside, it is the architecture that is disappearing fastest. No other country in the world is knocking down old buildings faster to make way for new hotels, highways and airports than China. In a few more years and there might not be anything unique or original left at all; the whole country, from Beijing to Kashgar, is starting to look the same. I feel my photographs of Kashgar, and the rest of the region of Xinjiang, are providing a historical record of what once was; the homes an laneways as they were intended to be. The entire scenario is a pity really, the cultural and architectural diversity being lost, even if re-built to look somewhat similar, is not something that can be faked, or easily brought back.

China’s contributions to Silk Road trade, the route of trade spanning from the Far East to the Mediterranean Sea that brought both silks, tea, knowledge, and even religion across continents, is storied and well documented. Of all the beautiful towns and villages that one can find along this route, none may be as written about or as often discussed as Kashgar. Situated just a few hundred kilometers from the border of Pakistan and China, in the furthest western corner of China, this Silk Road mainstay has 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, and the mystic of Kashgar, was established.

Much of this mystic, and excellent documentation by travel writers for almost a century and a half, is why the international community has been crying foul since May 2009, when it became apparent that the local city government of Kashgar had acted on plans to tear down much of city’s historic old quarter.
Local officials from the city government, always uncomfortable with direct questions, cited a danger from earthquakes and indicated that Kashgar’s historic old town – which contains mainly earthen homes, some hundreds of years old – must be razed in the name of public safety. Replacing the earthen homes will be similar style brick and steel based structure, with a focus on a stronger foundation.

Since May many local Uygurs have had to up and move out of their homes, some 13,000 families live in Kashgars “maze-like alleyways” of the old quarter, and more questions surfaced about when the local inhabitants would be allowed to move back in to their newly rebuilt, and stronger, homes. Rumors swirled of a possible land grab by the Kashgar government, forcing Uygurs to move out of their old earthen homes to temporary housing on the outskirts of town and then not allowing them to move back. But that appears not to be the case. The Kashgar government may indeed have safety on their mind. As entire families have moved out of center of Kashgar, the wrecking ball has done much damage, but new homes are beginning to be re-built under the watchful eyes of homeowners.

But not all is well. The money offered up by the government to relocated temporarily was barely adequate, but the government has mainly held up it’s share of the bargain; covering the costs of the bricks and steel rebar for the rebuilding of the foundation as well as the outer walls and roofs of the new homes, while home owners are responsible for interior decorations. Many home owners that I spoke with on a recent trip suggested that they were pleased with the outcome, but that there had been delays and they were told they would be in their new homes before winter, but now it looks like spring at the earliest.

While new bricks and steel rebar would make up the guts of the new foundation, many home owners are still planning on covering the exterior of their houses with similar earthen materials; so the “new” old quarter may yet have a similar feel that it did before the onslaught of bulldozers. The earthen, or mud brick, materials are essential for keeping the heat out in the summer and the cold out in the winter.

So, if little will actually change, and the old quarter of Kashgar will be rebuilt much the same, then why go through the entire process of destroying so many homes and relocating so many people? Could all of this been done in the name of economic stimulus?

It might be important to note that if a house is 300 years old, there is a very good chance that it is already earthquake proof. So there should be no need to tear it down and rebuild a stronger version. But the local government may have several motives at play; and first and foremost is that officials in Kashgar view the old laneways of the old quarter to be a haven of dissidents and terrorists. Rightly or wrongly, they have wanted to reorganize and re-account for everyone and everything in the old quarter for some time. Their opportunity came with the global financial crisis; when about USD 400 million was earmarked in the November 2008 stimulus package, a total of USD 585 billion, for the “earthquake proofing” of Kashgar; a very sly bit of pork barrel politics. That kind of money buys a lot of bricks, workers and bulldozers. It might even line a few pockets along the way as well. When in doubt, tear it down and build it up again.
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Digital Journalist Story:
LINK: Rebuilding of Kashgar

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: My Blogging Methodology

Hello, Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you all.

I wanted to write a quick little note about how I blog, when I blog and why I blog; if you find this a bit repetitive please bare with me.

A few years back I was sitting in a hotel room at the Paris airport and I decided right then and there that I was going to be more open. But what did I mean by “more open”?

Well, I wanted to share. Share my experiences living in China. Share my experiences documenting China. Convey my experiences as a documentary photographer trying to eek out a living in this most competitive of environments. When I spoke with people I’d met during my travels everyone had always said that I should write a book, and while that my indeed happen one day, today I’d prefer to focus on the blog as less direction is needed and I have the chance to maintain an ongoing dialog about work and life in the Middle Kingdom.

So I had decided to be more open, but how. These are mighty questions. Obliviously I didn’t want to get too much in to my personal life, I’m happily married, and while my career causes certain stains in most of my close relationships there is no immanent threat of leading a long and lonely life.

What about my career, how open would I be about that? Well, this is a bit more hairy. No one likes someone who kisses and tells and no one likes to be singled out. So I decided that I would blog about jobs, after the fact, and never mention whom the client is. For those very curious blog readers it is easy enough to piece it all together if you really want to, but I am assuming that we all have better things to do. I also decided that while I may indeed write blogs while on assignments I wouldn’t publish them until at least a week or two later. My reasoning for this is because I don’t want my blog to be overly emotional or filled with too many minute details about working in China. I would like my blog to read like a smooth and somewhat sophisticated reflection on work and life in China. So even while I write sometimes on the road I often wait a few days and re-read and re-write some sections after some reflection. I don’t want to be in the business of writing news reports or reporting from the field. I would prefer something subtler and more well constructed, something that could perhaps be used for a book some day.

And, how would I blog? Well, I’ve chosen Blogspot as my blog host and this has both positives and negatives. Blogspot is owned by Google and seems to work seamlessly in to my workflow, being a Gmail junky, but the problem is that Blogspot is completely blocked in China. So in order to post I need to bypass the Great Firewall of China, and that means that I need to invest in a decent VPN that continually is improving their functions and features and allows me to post at will, for that I’ve turned to Witopia.

And when do I blog? Well, I’m married and I travel a ton. So my lovely wife and get a bit pissed if I come back from a 7 day trip and the first thing I want to do is avoid her and blog about my war stories. So I tend to blog most when on the road. I try to always write at least one blog each I am in an airport, I find it an incredibly good use of time given that most people think that time wasted in airport lounges kills efficiency. But it is amazing what I can get done with a pair of Noise Canceling headphone from Bose and my laptop. I also often write blogs that are not time sensitive, like this one, and pre-set the posting date for weeks in advance. I see this as a chance to continue to publish original material even though I may be incredibly busy or traveling in a remote place that week.

And lastly, how often to I blog? Well I’ve cut back to posting just one blog per week. But I often write several blogs a week add them to the cue to be published. Several months ago I was publishing 2-3 times a week but it wasn’t sustainable. I have a lot to say, but not that much. It’s important to note here that I try not to publish other people’s material on my blog, meaning that I rarely cut and paste or link to the work of others. I would like my blog to be as original as possible, my voice to the outside world only. But I often copy and link to work that I’m a co-collaborator in, such as my “New Work” notices, or articles and information that I find to be unbelievably interesting and important. Apart from that, I try to provide the narrative, and I think my life is interesting enough to generate content for that. I hope my readers approve. Upwards and onwards!

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: The Unpredictable Xinjiang Winter

Hello.

A few weeks back I was heading to Kashgar for a very special event in the Muslim religious calendar. It was a moment that I felt would compliment my continued documentation of Chinese Turkistan, or the region of Xinjiang, China.

So I planned my trip and decided that even though the festival lasted only one day, I would arrive about 3 days early and shoot the build up and stay a day or two afterwards to continue documenting the rebuilding of Kashgar’s old town, a topic which I’ve blogged about several times.

Everything started off well enough. I packed my bags, organized all my black and white Kodak TriX film and arrived at the airport on time, so far so good. The flight from Shanghai to Urumqi left on time and the first five hours of the trip went swimmingly. At just around the time we were supposed to descend to the Urumqi airport a stewardess approached me and said that the Urumqi airport was covered in heavy fog and that our flight would landing in Korle, an oil town about 700 km to the south. An interesting detour, but safety first.

Upon landing in Korle the flight attendants couldn’t really tell us if we were going to get off the plane or stay on the plane. The natives were getting restless. When we finally got off the plane we were ushered in to the main terminal building, which was a vast glass, and steel structure that personifies Chinese development in Xinjiang province. The terminal building was attractive, and seemingly well built; and it stood out like a sore thumb amongst the farming fields surrounding the air stripe. Much to my surprise the military was sharing the airport and continued with their regular flights even though their terminal building was filled with around 800 people, as other flights from various parts of China were now stranded in Korle as well. So as military jets screamed off in the background, angered Chinese and Uygurs peppered questions to ground staff about when we would be departing for Urumqi and what the weather condidtions were at the Urumqi airport. The ground staff had little information to convey but were quick to provide instant noodles and bottles of water as the dry winter air had us all feeling a bit parched.

As the hours wore on I had finished my book “Mr. China” by Tim Clissold and my Economist magazine. With all of Xinjiang still cut off from the outside world because of international phone call bans and no Internet access, my options for entertainment were getting bleaker by the moment. I had another book in my check-in luggage but it didn’t seem like I was going to get a hold of that anytime soon. And so I sat.

After sitting on the ground in an airport terminal on the edge of the vast Taklamakan Desert for about six hours the passengers were all told that our flight was officially cancelled. We would have to spend the night in Korle. My trip was becoming in jeopardy. I didn’t know what was going to happen. We were shipped out by bus to a local hotel in the city of Korle were we spent the night on the airlines dime. We were told to be ready to go back to the airport at 1130am the next morning. Why so late I asked one of the airport staff? If I could leave at 7am I would much prefer getting out earlier, as I could still make it to Kashgar and have an afternoon worth of work. But the reason was so that they could maintain their same landing slot from the previous day, fair enough. I asked the same woman again if this happened often. She replied in the winter it happens several times a month.

The essential problem is that Urumqi is basically a horrible place to have an airport. Mountains to the south and west cause a buildup of fog and cloud that surrounds the harsh provincial capital. The geographic conditions cause incredible wind speeds in the summer and often-intense fog and cloud in the dark and depressing winter. This wasn’t entirely a surprise to me. I’d been to Xinjiang in the winter before and noticed the fog and the harsh weather conditions, but it had never impeded travel before; I was less lucky this time. I was mid-way through a bit of a nightmare journey.

So after a night in Korle’s finest 1-star hotel we all loaded back up on the airport bus and headed back to the airport where we sat for another three hours. Then finally there was action and movement. We boarded our plane and headed for Urumqi. We were all saved. I’d make it Kashgar only one day late and still get a chance to shoot. But things got significantly stickier upon landing in Urumqi.

The flight from Korle to Urumqi is one of my all time favorite flights in China as the one-hour flight takes you straight over a fairly meaty section of the Tian Shan mountain range. Glued to the window for the entire flight I was memorized, as I often am, by the jagged peaks and harsh landscapes. In 2001 I had traveled by bus from Urumqi to Korle on the old mountain road that was cut straight through the Tian Shan range. As we winded our way to Korle on that fourteen-hour journey the stunning landscape and the un-believable amount of switchbacks along the route enchanted me; it was truly one of China’s great road journeys. I promised myself if I ever owned a motorcycle I would revisit that route. Nowadays the government has since built a suave new four-lane expressway that goes around the mountains and south to Korle cutting the travel time to about 7-8hrs. Sadly the mountain road is rarely used anymore.

After a dangerously bumpy landing in Urumqi, the fog was no joke; I collected my checked baggage and ran upstairs to check on my flight to Kashgar. The woman at the China Southern desk looked at my hopelessly. My flight was delayed but more importantly that there were about 8 planes worth of people that needed to get to Kashgar before me. So even if the weather were perfectly clear, I wouldn’t get a chance to fly until the following day. But the weather was horrible and after my flight landed from Korle they cancelled the rest of the flights for the day. Fuck!

The Urumqi airport was a complete mess. At the entrance to the airport and the surrounding check in areas there were people sitting, sleeping and camping out. Instant noodle containers were adrift everywhere. I was in the middle of what was a sea of stranded people. I couldn’t manage to stay there much longer and needed some space to think. I hailed a cab and headed in to town where I knew some people who might be able to help. Not knowing how long the fog would last I talked to a train ticket agent I knew from a previous trip. I asked if he had a and sleeper births available to Kashgar, he laughed so hard on his end of the phone I had to pull the phone away from my hear in much the same way you do when you accidentally dial someone’s fax number. Clearly the 24hr train journey from Urumqi to Kashgar wouldn’t be an option, tickets had disappeared. My next call was to a driver that I’d used a few times in the past, was he available and how long was the drive to Kashgar? He turned out to be in Korle, a few Chinese oil men had hired him to drive them from Urumqi to Korle the day before and he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow, and he said the drive to Kashgar in this weather would take about 18-20 hours. Fuck! Fuck!

So I checked in to a hotel in Urumqi and found a bit to eat. By this time my nerves were shattered. I’d been traveling for two days straight. I hadn’t eaten well and it was looking more and more like I wasn’t going to make it to Kashgar. My mood was bitter. With no Internet in the region I was bored out of my skull. I tried to write but my mind was too frayed. I tried to read but I couldn’t focus. Instead I watched six straight hours of Entourage, the entire season 6, that I had on disk with me. A savior. It was exactly what I needed, a few cheap laughs and a good nights rest.

I was up at 630am the next morning. I had rebooked a flight that was supposed to be leaving at 9am and I called the airport and they told me that flights were leaving, but not on time. Okay, we had small progress. After a breakfast of Congee and fried bread sticks I was back at the airport. It was clear after passing through the airport doors at 730am that several hundred people had spent the night there on the floor. People were still passed out all over the cheap marble floor and the chaos from the previous day had seemed to intensify. Now there were flights leaving but who would be allowed to go first, the masses made their claims via several shooting matches. Made me thank god I wasn’t an airline staffer, I’d have lost my nerve and slapped someone.

Since I had canceled my flight from the previous day I was able to re-book and check in rather smoothly. My flight was delayed 4 hours but flights were leaving. It appeared that all I required was a bit of patience. And my patience paid off. Sure enough my flight left 4 hours late and I was in the air, bound for Kashgar. A small dose of victory in an ocean of chaos, but I had lost 48 hours of shooting time.

My fixer picked me up at the airport and got me over to my hotel. Within 10 minutes of checking in I was out in the town shooting. I needed to make up for lost time. It was the day before the big festival and everyone was selling sheep, which would be slaughtered the following day, in the streets. The scenes were fantastic. It was as though the famous Sunday animal market had moved right in to the city center. Tradesmen who bargain for a living pushed each other back and forth, shaking of the hands seals the deal. I managed to get close to several sheep sellers and watch them ply their trade; echoing mannerisms and skill of their forefathers, the generations of Silk Road traders and herdsmen who had come before. The atmosphere was electric.

My first half-day on the ground was positive. The TriX was moving fast and furious and that night I was giddy with anticipation of what might transpire the following day for the festival. My first good nights sleep in days yielded some quality rest. The next day would be long and intense.

Being up and out of the hotel before 930am, before the sun had risen, was not too big a problem, less the bitter cold. It was winter and while Kashgar is an oasis and at a lower altitude than Urumqi, it was still chilly; and the smell of burnt coal hung in the air from a night of staying warm in the mud brick homes of the old town and the surrounding farming communities. But fighting the bitter cold would be well worth it. For at 930am the action started has hundreds of people began filling in to the Id Kah Square, in front of the main mosque, for Morning Prayer. The scene was set alight by a rising sun from 10am to 1030am. Needless to say it was a Kodak moment.
Following Morning Prayer I headed in to the old town to watch the traditional process of slaughtering sheep in the small laneways of the old town, a majestic scene by any account. The rest of the day was followed by bouncing back and forth between the old town for the slaughtering of the sheep and the Id Kah Square for traditional music and singing and dancing. The morning cold had passed giving way to clear blue skies and a glaring sun that left this photographer fairy sunburned. Day two and day three were much the same as the festival tapered off and I focused back on speaking with old town residents and shooting portraits and architecture.

And in the blink of an eye I was back in Urumqi, fogged in waiting for my flight to Shanghai. I’d eaten something funky during the festival and was feeling most uncomfortable. My flight was delayed and I had come full circle. My six-day trip, only three days of shooing, and three days of being stranded and traveling, had taken their toll. I curled up on a few seats at the Urumqi Airport trying not to wretch.

Some trips take more out of you than others. After being stranded, delayed, knee deep in sheep blood and then delayed again I was a broken man. The food poisonings was a bonus. When I finally strolled in to my home in Shanghai at 2am my wife looked at me with the classic “WTF look”. Is it worth all this trouble she asks? Absolutely, I just prayed my pictures did the festival justice. But that wasn’t the right time for professional reflection; it was the moment for stomach medicine and a good 16 hours in bed. I would live to fight another day; hell, I was leaving for Lhasa in just five days. I needed to sort this out in a hurry. The journey continues.

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: Kodak Support

Hello.

I’ve been using Kodak black and white film for my entire career; meaning simply that I’ve been a TriX fan since day one, and I will die a TriX fan. But the film is expensive and it’s been incredibly difficult to find in China in 35mm format. So it was essentially a sign from the heavens above when Kodak contacted me earlier this year and offered me some free TriX; I was glowing for weeks.

My color film choices have been slightly more strained. I’ve been a Fuji man for most of my career, for no other reason that this kind of film is the most readily available in China. My choices of Provia 100 and 400 provided me with a quality film with a vast range; but I never gave it much of a thought really. I never dabbled with competitor films and I never questioned my film choices. I just went with the flow, concerned more about the story and the composition than the actual film being used.

Then earlier this year Kodak sent me that batch of TriX, that I mentioned above, and they included a few rolls of color film as well; a very savvy move on their part. I’ll admit the color stock sat on my desk for several weeks before I got off my butt and put them through a few test runs, and I can’t tell you how glad I am that I finally did. I was incredibly pleased with the results, so much so that I asked Kodak for a few more rolls. And to my surprise they said sure. I glowed further.

I’m mainly shooting color side film, or transparency film. I rarely dabble in negative film anymore these days. So I’ve been shooting the new E100VS and EV 200 Kodak color slide film, and I’ve been pleased with the results. The range and the richness of the colors are lovely. The super-fine grain is helpful as well, especially when the film is pushed, as I push the EV200 to ISO 800 for some of my shots where there is less available light.

So now, finally, I am a die-hard Kodak user. And much to my pleasure they have begun supplying me with all of my black and white and color film needs, and I couldn’t be thankful enough. It’s my first sponsorship of sorts, and it’s very humbling to have a company like Kodak supporting my image making.

How has this changed my life? Well, first off it has allowed me to have more control over my work. For example, often clients I work for ask me to now shoot longer projects, that don’t have fast turn around times, in digital. When I ask why they insist on digital they often site cost concerns. My reply now is, “don’t worry. I’ll be shooting film and it won’t cost you a thing”. Kodak have stepped in a filled a financing gap. Where I would have normally shot in digital to keep costs down follow the instructions of the magazine, I can now pursue my artistic belief that film still offers more range and higher quality, it still my preferred medium. And I now have the financial flexibility to continue using film when many clients have turned their backs on analog photography. And you know what the funny thing is? After I turn in the projects clients often write back saying thanks for making the effort to use film, the results are lovely. I love that.

Now, I’m not very good at comparing gear or writing blogs about how one camera, or film, is better than the other and why. I just know what I like and it now makes me very happy to have new opportunities to pursue more film photography. And in this day and age, given the harsh economic conditions, having a choice between film and digital, when it doesn’t cost you extra money, is a pretty special thing.

At this very moment I’ve taken a couple hundred rolls of Kodak color slide film and I’m currently working on a project that will hopefully get some decent responses from my clients. It’s my first, color, all-Kodak large film project and it’ll involve me hunkering down in a remote part of China for about 10-12 days and just shooting. And with the weather being horribly cold, film cameras – my Canon EOS 1V’s - and their fantastic durability are the only choice. And with that, of course, comes an entire bag of my Kodak E100VS and E200.

Lastly, I few months back I wrote a blog about how Kodak Kodachrome was retired and that Kodak and their color film business might be on it’s last legs. But clearly I was wrong. They’ve recently developed the new slide film that I am using today and they’ve introduced a new color negative film as well. So, yes, while Kodachrome was retired it appears that Kodak have improved on a previous model and retired an aging workhorse. Kodak are still in the film game, they are still heavily invested in producing color and black and white film; and they are also investing in people like me, a relative new comer to the game, but a photographer who puts a serious amount of film through his camera and isn’t afraid to talk about it. And I can’t thank Kodak enough for their support. Now if someone from Canon would just call, I’d be walking on air.

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: My New Canon EOS 1V's

Hello.

Yes. It appears I've done the impossible. The ridiculous. The un-imaginable. I've purchased two more film cameras. Insane? Perhaps, but much needed. Let me try to explain.

When I was a budding photographer I was a bit clueless and in serious need of guidance. That guidance was provided by TIME magazine regular, and Fifty Crows Award winner, Andrew Moore. To see some of Andrew's work visit the Fifty Crows and search under the winners for the year of 2000. You'll see his photographic coverage of Northern Ireland.

I met Andrew while I was learning how to be a photographer. Well, in fact I am still learning how to be a photographer but I met Andrew at an earlier stage. We were side by side shooting together during the massive protests in Hong Kong on July 1st 2003, they say about a million people took to the streets that day. Andrew's work was lovely.

Andrew had relocated from the UK to Hong Kong and had begun work in Asia. At that time I had only one camera and 1 lens, a Canon EOS 1 with a 50mm f/1.4 lense. Life was bliss. But as I continued working on personal projects and trying to put together a strong portfolio to show clients Andrew actually provided a lot of guidance and assistance. He showed me a lot of his personal work and offered me a lot of tips. It might not have taken too much of his time or effort, but our relationship was very influential and inspiring for me.

When I was about to leave Hong Kong Andrew mentioned that he was selling is Canon EOS 1n's, and asked me if I would like to purchase them. I said absolutely. They were the camera's that he used for much of his long and storied, and award winning, Northern Ireland work. I paid a well below market price and packed my bags and returned to Shanghai. Since that moment those Canon EOS 1n's have been the backbone of my career to date. I've used them thousands of times and put every kind of film imaginable through them. The whole time remembering the history of the cameras. It's been an emotional experience to say the least.

Well I'm sad to say, sorry Andrew, that I've just upgraded to the Canon EOS 1v. It is perhaps the last Canon film camera ever to be developed; and while the design and functions haven't changed since it was introduced almost a decade ago; it was a welcome upgrade for me. As I've mentioned several times on this blog I push through a lot of film and the EOS system has been my workhorse. Andrew's 1n's operated flawlessly for over five years and only just a few weeks ago did I order up the new 1v's from B&H. Why did I order them from B&H in the US? Simple really. When I went to the camera market in Shanghai people laughed at me when I told them I was looking for the EOS 1v. And when I called my favorite photography supplier in Hong Kong he told me it would take three weeks to order. B&H had it at my doorstep within five working days. Awesome!

I've put the camera through its paces over the last few weeks and it has performed wonderfully. Once again Canon comes through in the clutch. A few people have written in and asked what kind of gear I shoot with, so here is a brief run down of the gear I've got at home:

2x Leica M6
2x Canon EOS 1n (Andrew, I couldn't bring myself to sell them)
2x Canon EOS 1v
2x Canon EOS 5D MII (digital)
1x Fuji 6x9 (which you'll see in a new project coming soon)

So yes, I've had to re-mortgage my house to buy photography equipment over the last few years; but I feel I've invested well. My equipment is durable, takes a beating and holds up well in the re-sale market. We'll get in to lenses another day; I'm a bit busy with a project right now using my Canon EOS 1v's; I still love film.

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: Neo-Malthusian

Hello.

I would like to first off say that I'm a realist. I don't believe in Red or Blue, or Conservative or Democrat. I believe in what happens on the ground. Perhaps that would be obvious given that I try to document reality and real life on a daily basis. I take my political ideology from what I see in my daily life. I take my understanding of what state our society or planet is in by my work, my travel and my experiences. And after reading a special report by the Economist, a few weeks back, on population growth I have a few comments I'd like to share on this blog. I hope you'll find them thought provoking, and a strong base for debate.

I think it is important to start out by saying that I live in China, the world's most populous country. At the moment there are around 1.3 or 1.4 billion people that call China home; that means just about 1 in every 4 people in the world is Chinese.

Within China I travel almost weekly, visiting cities and rural communities alike, and often after my jobs are completed and I make my way back to my home in Shanghai (a city of 20 million) I can't help but often think to myself that there are just too many people in this country. It's impossible for them all to obtain a high standard of living and it's impossible for the government to reach each person with basic government services like education and healthcare. There is just too much to manage, democracy or no democracy; managing a country effectively with more than a billion people might just not be possible. One only has to look to democratic India to see how messy democratic development can be.

Sure that might sound like a good excuse, "oh, we have too many people to govern effectively"; but it could actually have a lot of truth to it. Too many people means competition is intense at every level of society which leaves the masses feeling often helpless, which often leads to people thinking that corruption is their only escape or way out. I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but when I see ten year old kids coming out of school exams crying hysterically because they didn't do well and they won't get in to a good middle school, echoing words like: "my life is over", "I've failed my parents", and "I'll never get a good job"; I can't help but thinking that is a lot of pressure for a ten year old kid. When I was ten years old Canada had about 25 million people, a shade more than Shanghai, and I can't remember ever feeling like that - even right up until the end of my University career. So what is my point?

My point is that I'm starting to get a sick feeling in my stomach every time I visit a small village somewhere in rural China and see a husband and wife with 5 or 6 kids and not enough food or clothes to go around. I'm pained by reading about Philippine laborers losing their jobs in Taiwan and having to return to Manila with no money and no plan to feed their wife and five children. I'm exhausted by reading about how the world needs Chinese citizens to consume more, to what end? As our societies evolve and women have more educational and employment opportunities birth rates do fall, and they have started falling across much of the world; and that is a good thing. Very few of us, less than 1/4 of the global population, live in an environment where our only form of social security comes from the number of children we have. And hopefully that number will continue to decrease, in fact it must.

While the joys of having children and rising a family are obvious, so too are the successes of family planning and lighter forms of population control. Any country that promotes abstinence should be smacked for thinking the world lives in a sitcom from the 1950s. People have sex, and lots of it; often because it feels great and is a lot of fun if done so responsibly; so getting condoms and educating people how to use them is crucial. And there is a lot of evidence of that paying dividends in Africa and parts of Asia. The Economist even reported that women in Latin America and Asia used condoms 4x more often then women in Africa, so there is still much work to be done on the micro-planning level.

What about the macro-level? How does government family planning work? Well, like all macro planning; it is often very painful for some at the ground level but often better for the society as a whole. Much has been made of China's "One Child Policy" since it's inception in the late 1970s, but reports show that that policy alone has prevented about 400 million new births; meaning that the population of China is today only 1.3 billion instead of 1.7 billion and there are only 20 million new graduates entering the labor market each year instead of 40 million. Now it is true that such macro level planning restricts individual rights and freedoms, there have been horror stories of forced abortions, abandonment of baby girls, sterilization and all the rest of it; but can you imagine the energy demands of a China with 1.7 billion people? Already with 1.3 billion China is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, one could make the argument that effective macro level population control in China is benefiting the global environment. Are individuals responsible enough to make the right choices on their own? Do they know what is best for them? Often yes, but perhaps sometimes no.

The Economist reports that the world population is likely to peak around 9.6 billion people in 2050, and then decline from there. China will actually start declining much sooner and be taken over by India as the most populous country in the world; which is a very scary prospect for both urban and rural Indians. Between now and 2050 our world needs to figure out a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions, find ways to generate renewable energy, waste less, consume less, produce more food, use water more efficiently, create better infrastructure, manage mega cities more effectively and above all else (as the Chinese government would say) keep political stability.

It's really an incredible task. I read the other day that a woman in the US had seven babies at one time, a result of fertility drugs; and that she is on welfare and hasn't held a steady job in years. I also read that in 1949 when the Communist government took control of China there were only 350 million people here. Can the world prosper with less people? Yes. Can individuals throughout the world become responsible and educated global citizens and manage issues like individual birth rates, waste and consumption on their own? I really hope so.

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: The Economist

Hello.

Why does the Economist hate photographers so much?

I mean, they don't really hate photographers. The Economist is a big picture buyer and their magazine is getting thicker and thicker each year. My reason for my opening statement is that they don't credit any photography; and recently they used one of my images from a computer factory in Shenzhen, and there was no credit in the magazine and only a "Corbis" credit online. See below.

Now, I think I understand why they don't credit writers for their magazine; and it's because they are all staffers and they don't want to draw away from the brand of the Economist and let any individual writers become larger than the actual magazine. And that is fair enough assuming people are compensated enough for giving up that opportunity.

But freelance photographers, and writers as well, rely so much on proper captioning as a form of marketing or advertising. I've had a lot of re-sales over the years from people who viewed an image in a newspaper or magazine and picked out my name in the caption, then googled me and found my website or archive.

So why does the Economist do that? Anyone have any inside information? While it might get on my nerves personally, you can't really fault the Economist and their methods or business plan. Their magazine is booming, in both terms of subscriptions and advertising, while the rest of the industry is falling in to a dark hole. I've been a subscriber for five or six years and I couldn't image living without my weekly edition; if for nothing else it gives me a lot of blog about.

Economist Picture:
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Back to the circuit board
Oct 22nd 2009 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition



Tech firms are doing so well that boosters say they will spur a broader economic recovery. That is unlikely.

THIS year’s Web 2.0 Summit, an annual technology conference in San Francisco, featured a reception at a swanky hotel dubbed “Web After Dark”. The event was packed with euphoric entrepreneurs toasting their grand plans. Conference veterans noted the contrast with the previous year’s summit, which many attendees spent drowning their sorrows as the world economy sank into chaos.

There is plenty of other evidence that the darkness that has hung over the information-technology industry for many months is lifting. Three of the sector’s heavyweights—IBM, Intel and Google—recently reported surprisingly robust profits. Even Yahoo!, a struggling internet portal, did less badly than expected. On October 19th Apple stunned even the most bullish investors by posting its best quarterly results ever: revenues came in at $9.9 billion, 24% higher than the same period a year earlier. Venture-capital investments in America are growing again. And Windows 7, the new operating system Microsoft launched on October 22nd, is expected to pep up demand for personal computers and related gear. The OECD believes a recovery has been under way for some time, particularly in Asia.

All this is more than welcome. But the wave of good news has also helped to buoy the industry’s infamous self-regard. Some even predict that IT will pull the economy out of the mire, with investment in technology giving a swift boost to productivity and job creation. As Edward Yardeni, an economist known for his optimism, has put it: “This will be a technology-led recovery.”

Just how much of a boost IT can provide is a subject of some contention. Both Forrester and Gartner, the industry’s leading research firms, predict that the downturn will bottom out in the current quarter and that growth will resume next year. Yet the two firms differ on the severity of the recession in IT and, more importantly, the speed at which the industry will pull out of its slump. Forrester sees a V-shaped future, whereas Gartner envisages more of an L, with revenues remaining below last year’s level until 2012 at the earliest.

There are good reasons to be conservative. For a start, talk of rapid growth in percentage terms disguises low absolute numbers, thanks to the depth of the recent contraction. If venture-capital investments in America were up by an impressive 17% in the third quarter, according to the National Venture Capital Association, this was mainly because they had dropped to an historic low. The volatile dollar muddles the picture as well. For almost a year, the currency’s increasing strength weighed heavily on the results of American IT firms by devaluing foreign revenues. Now its increasing weakness makes their numbers look far healthier.

In addition, excellent results at Apple, Google and even Intel reflect increased demand from consumers. Apple has benefited from the boom in smart-phones, Google from users clicking on more advertisements and Intel from the popularity of “netbooks” (small laptops), many of which contain its chips. But companies still account for by far the biggest chunk of technology spending. IBM, which offers the entire range of corporate IT services, from powerful computers to consulting services, is therefore a much better proxy for the overall health of the IT industry. Although its profits were better than expected, its revenues fell by nearly 7% in the third quarter compared with the same period last year.



Moreover, it is likelier that the economy, supported by low interest rates and stimulus programmes, is reviving IT, rather than the other way around—a function of IT’s increasing pervasiveness. It now accounts for over half of American firms’ investment in equipment (see chart). In the countries of the OECD, the organisation’s secretariat estimates, it accounts for more than 8% of value-added and nearly 6% of employment. Sacha Wunsch-Vincent, an economist at the OECD, says, “For most OECD countries, the prospects are of a very fragile and weak recovery, for the overall economy and thus for IT.”

Even if corporate investment in IT does bounce back faster than expected, it could be some time before the effects feed through to the broader economy. In a new book, “Wired for Innovation: How Information Technology Is Reshaping The Economy”, Erik Brynjolfsson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Adam Saunders of the Wharton School point out that it usually takes five to seven years for IT investments to produce substantial returns because it typically takes that long for companies to make the organisational changes needed to capitalise on the new technology. What is more, Mr Brynjolfsson points out, the recession has encouraged companies to focus their IT investments on boosting the productivity of shrunken workforces, which may mean that unemployment remains stubbornly high for some time to come.

So the parties in San Francisco seem premature. Yet the recession has also accelerated trends that could make for a bigger celebration later. It has speeded up the adoption of promising new technologies, such as cloud and mobile computing. Without the crisis, consumers might not have rushed to buy cheap netbooks or even smart-phones. Needing to cut investment, companies looked more closely at software delivered as a service over the internet. One firm that has grown consistently this year is Salesforce.com, the largest provider of such offerings.

These trends have also been fuelled by the shift of the industry’s centre of gravity to emerging markets, where consumers have less money to spend on technology and companies are more likely to outsource their IT (see article). Countries such as China and India have seen IT spending increase by up to 30% annually in recent years and account for much of the industry’s recent growth. Between 2003 and 2008, developing countries’ share of spending on IT grew from 15% to 24%, according to the OECD. Developing countries also make more than half of the world’s electronics. China alone churns out more than a quarter, compared with just 3% in 1995, according to Reed Electronics, another market-research firm.

As for rich countries, the crisis has prompted governments to speed up IT investments which might otherwise not have become a priority for years, says the OECD’s Mr Wunsch-Vincent. The stimulus packages of most countries in the OECD include large sums for smart power grids, digitisation of health records and the deployment of broadband networks. All this, he says, should boost productivity and employment in time, provided the politicians have spent wisely—a big if.

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: New Work from Chinese Turkistan

Hello,

I just wanted to write to make you aware of some new work I've completed on my multi-year project about Chinese Turkistan, or China's northwestern Xinjiang province.

The project has been an exciting progression in both the disciplines of anthropology and photography, in an attempt to emulate the methodology of the great documentary photographers of the past century. It's been a most challenging task, and at stages it has been an incredibly rewarding process. The task at hand, is still that of documenting a culture and a way of life that is struggling to come to grips with an ever expanding Chinese presence throughout the region. This struggle, in my opinion, will always exist at some level; and my documentary project may never have a finite ending because of that. But still I continue to visit the region several times a year, capturing glimpses of a culture on its last legs - so to speak.

Xinjiang was in the news for all of the wrong reasons during much of July and August for ethnic riots in the city of Urumqi. And while Urumqi was clearly the flashpoint, the rest of China's largest province remains relatively calm as the local population comes to terms with the development goals of the regional government. Below are two links. The first is to a series of new work, some of which was included in a gallery show that I had in Toronto, Canada in August 2009. The second link is a wider edit of both new and old work covering the last several years.

The New Work:
LINK: http://archive.ryanpyle.com

A Wide Edit of Old and New work:
LINK: http://archive.ryanpyle.com

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: Bizarre Driver

Hello.

As part of my profession, I end up hiring a lot of drivers. Almost every job I am involved in requires me to travel somewhere and hire a driver so that I can get either from A to B, or so I can make multiple visits in one day without worrying about standing around waiting for taxi's.

With that being said I can say with confidence that I've hired hundreds of drivers over the last nine years in China. I've had the chain smokers, the mobile phone talkers, the drunks, and one who fell asleep at the wheel. But don't think it is all negative; I've had a few gems as well.

Last week I was bumbling around Hainan Island working on a story and I hired a driver to take me from the provincial capital in Haikou along the coast to south to Sanya. The drive was very pretty and at one point, after cruising through endless stretches of cocunut plantations, we came across a massive mountain right on the coast.

My natural reaction when I see something like that is: let's get to the top and see what the coast line looks like. And after convincing my driver it would be exciting to veer off our original path for just a few minutes, he said he would try the road that seemed to be leading up the mountain. And so we followed the narrow switch backs for almost 20 minutes twisting and turning until we reached near the top of the mountain. Once there, it was just a short walk up some bamboo stairs to the summit of the mountain, and endless views north along Hainan's coast. I popped out of the car and started towards the stairs, my assistant was close behind me; but alas the driver stayed put.

Dumbfounded I walked back to the car and asked him if he wanted to come along? Then mentioning that I wanted him to join us. He said no and reclined his seat and closed his eyes. I asked him if he had been up to the top of this mountain before, he said no; never having opened his eyes. I let it go.

Upon reaching the summit I was amazed by the incredibly beautiful coast line; I shot a bunch of shots with several different lenses and once finished I just sat back and gazed out at the ocean for a good half an hour; taking in the salty sea air. It was a perfect moment of relaxation after a few hectic days of traveling and shooting.

Upon getting back to the car my assignment was beaming about how lovely the view was, my driver had been out cold; sleeping like a log. Once we got back in to the car I asked again if he would like to take a quick peak, he said no, started his car and we carried on with our trip down to Sanya.

Odd? Normal? Lazy? Unmotivated? Generally unhappy? Focused? Goal Oriented? Exhausted?

It strikes me as odd that sometimes in China, particularly men, don't seem very adventurous or care much to seek out the natural beauty of their own country. Are they above it all? Or just simply uninterested? I couldn't believe it when my driver said he wasn't going to come with us. There was not even an entrance fee. It was free. Clearly you don't have to be a photographer to enjoy an incredible mountain top coastal view. What gives?

Mountain Viewing Note: Travel from Haikou to Wenjiao on the provincial highway. From Wenjiao continue East until you reach LongLou. Once you get their you'll be able to see the massive mountain. Just head due East, straight to the ocean. At the bottom of the mountain you'll see signed that indicate that the site is a nature reserve, then about half way up you'll see another sign asking you to turn back and that it is forbidden to enter; ignore that one and keep ascending. You'll have to park you're car at the Chinese Naval Base at the summit of the mountain, don't worry there are fairly tourist friendly. Stay away from the base and take the bamboo stairs up to the summit, opposite the base. Enjoy the view.

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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