Tweet

Share

Note from Jonah: This is the continuation of a photo series from the Great Himalayan Mountain Range. The photos document a journey by car, foot, boat, plane and elephant from Tibet to Nepal.

I gave the woman above 5 kuai (60 cents) after taking her photo … Every since, I’ve felt horrible about it. I didn’t intend to do it, I just got stuck in an awkward situation. Let me explain …

I have never experienced the population of China reacting to tourism like they did in Tibet. From Disney-like monasteries to beggars, the impact is obvious.

I’ve been to some of the poorest villages in China. I’ve eating dinner with a family in Anhui Province, where their annual income was less than $100 per year. I’ve been to a town in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region where sand is taking over lands and livelihoods. However, never in rural China has a beggar ever asked me for money. Although this is different in cities — beggars are still very rare compared to anyplace I’ve ever been in the developing world.

Furthermore, no Chinese person has ever asked me for money to take their photo. In Tibet, traditionally nomadic people are waiting at vistas hoping to be photographed as a way of making money. Tibetan monasteries charge an entrance fee — however, on top of that if you want to photograph, an additional fee is often charged — sometimes, the additional fee is per room. Meaning you pay an entrance fee, and every room you photograph has an additional fee.

The room above in the Ta Shi Lhun Monastery cost 10 RMB to photograph ($1.49). Should I have paid?

While I have seen these actions and practices in other countries — I had not seen it anywhere in China. This part of tourism brings up a tough ethical question for travelers and photographers.

Should you pay for a photograph? What makes it more tough, is the amount of money you pay is almost meaningless on a western scale.

My attitude is: You should never pay to take someone’s photograph. If they don’t want to be photographed, that is fine — and people should respect that. By paying to photograph rural people, you fuel a very negative occurrence of tourism’s impact on people and places. Every time a traveler pays to photograph someone, it makes this form of economic gain one step more viable for rural people and in turn, aids in the disintegration of traditional lifestyles and culture.

Having said this; I admit, this is much easier said than done. For example, if a street beggar gets me at the right moment, pending on their attitude I might give them money (non-photographically speaking). The woman in the top photo was asking for money. For whatever reason, I reached into my pocket to see what type of small bills I had. After I gave it to her, I realized she was selling me the right to take her photo.

So I took it. I’ve been mad at myself ever since.

I took the above photo of a Yak on top of a mountain on a pass near the Drigung Monastery. It was just standing there eating. However, instantly after — the owner of the Yak charged at me demanding money for photographing his Yak. This was after the incident with the lady and I refused.

But then I felt bad for saying no to him. It didn’t seem like I could win — however, by refusing to give him money I felt I made a more ethical decision.

The ethics of travel photography are very difficult — especially given the purpose of your photography. Are you taking the photo for a magazine? For your Facebook page? To show your grandmother? Simply for yourself?

I do believe foreigners should not pay subjects to be photographed; however, I also understand the reality of assignments, the pressure of the value of the dollar and the feeling that you can help someone in a small way.

I believe if you minimize your impact on the people and places you visit you will leave the places more authentic for other travelers while helping to preserve global culture and our physical environment. Paying people for their photograph is doing a disservice to ethnic populations, other travels and our global society.

Road Trip on the Himalayan Shelf: If you’re just joining now, here’s what you’ve missed:

1. Road trip on the Himalayan Shelf
2. Lhasa: City of Sunlight, City in the Sky
3. In Tibet, People’s Liberation Army (mostly) out of site, but not out of mind
4. Attn: Crayola — a new color for you — Tibetan Blue
5. Tibetan Cloudscapes
6. Tibetan Prayer Flags Littering Roof of the World
7. Should you pay for photos? The ethics of travel photography
8. 29 Minutes and 15 Seconds on Mount Everest
9. Desertification stretching from Inner Mongolia to Tibet
10. ‘The journey not the arrival matters’
11. Namaste and welcome to Nepal
12. Kathmandu: The greatest place on earth to get lost
13. Kathmandu: Full of mystery, culture, history — and trash
14. ‘A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles’
15. Who has the strongest necks in the world?
16. Hey hey, they’re some monkeys
17. After the Himalayan: The Terai
18. Watch where you step: Chitwan National Park
19. At the end of the road: Pokhara
20. Final Destination 8 (in 3D): The luckiest travelers in the world
21. Tibet to Nepal: ‘The Journey Not the Arrival Matters’

Tweet

Last week I returned from a shoot in Yanshan Village, Anhui Province. I went to a rural school with NGO Shanghai Roots & Shoots to check out a poverty elevation program for an article for this Thursday’s China Daily. Much like the last story I did on this organization, this program was very impressive. More on that shoot later this week.

On my way back from the village, reporter Erik Neilson and I stopped to hang out with the Anhui tourism officials. They told us, we were the first foreign reporters ever sent to Anhui by a Chinese media group (meaning, plenty of Western journalists had been there, but none that worked for Chinese media). To celebrate this momentous occasion they made sure we had a good time by feeding us excessive amounts of food (some of which was a bit hard to stomach) and copious amounts of alcohol (in the form Baijiu and Meijiu) throughout the day, everyday.

While most people wouldn’t think Anhui and tourism are synonymous (its normally known for being poor), the province actually does have a lot to offer. Beyond the famous Huangshan in the Yellow Mountain Range, there are pockets of ancient history throughout the province.

While the quality of the places I was shown ranged dramatically, one place I did like a lot was Sanhe — the ancient city of Hefei.

Walking into Sanhe, you almost feel like you are leaving China and entering medieval Europe. Although the city is certainly a tourist attraction, the residents are still living within the ancient city walls. Most of the streets are too small for cars, and the streets are lined with cobblestone paths. Given the rainy environment, small shops and people drudging around in big boots — the city really feels and looks ancient.

Villagers pride themselves with their sea food which is swimming and slithering in small buckets of water on the sides of the small alleys. At one banquet, the officials insisted that I eat one of their famous mud eels — some type of snakefish that lives in mud. They are black in color, about 10 inches long with a bumpy, slimy and spiny back. The inside of the eel is filled with bones that someone from Sanhe probobly wouldn’t spit out. The rice wine I was being force fed was a true savior to wash this one down. When I say ‘force fed’ it doesn’t necessarily mean someone is holding my head back — however, at these types of meals someone will cheers you about every 1 to 2 minutes. Rather than the entire table cheersing, individuals standup and cheers each other. However, as a foreign guest in this situations, you end up raising your glass very often (another example of this here “Lessons from getting into a drinking match with Mongolian farmers”).

The alleys of Sanhe were measured in entertaining terms — one person, two person or three person alleys. Meaning, how many people can fit side-by-side while walking. One of the one person alleys I was in was small enough I couldn’t keep my umbrella open. The alley in the photo above is a two person alley.

While the tourism officials held my hand from attraction to attraction (through the rain), during lunch with the mayor of Sanhe, I was informed me of an enormous lotus field on the outskirts of the city. However, this wasn’t on the tourism officials – official, list of things to do. In a quick deal with the officials, I agreed to do portraits of the tourism officials, party officials and mayor in the lotus fields, in exchange for getting access to the fields.

And she wasn’t kidding, it was enormous. Hanging out in the rain in a field of lotus just about as far as you can see is pretty neat. Frogs are jumping off lotus leaves and the saturation of the color is extremely vibrant. Some of these leaves and flowers can grow much bigger than your head.

The mayor told me she thought most of these plants were about 3.5 meters tall. The plant itself can get even bigger as Wikipedia tells us:

The plant normally grows up to a height of about 150 cm and a horizontal spread of up to 3 meters, but some unverified reports place the height as high as over 5 meters. The leaves may be as large as 60 cm in diameter, while the showy flowers can be up to 20 cm in diameter.

When we weren’t eating slimey foods and strong alcohals, we spent the rest of the time was visiting historical spots, houses and ruins (see slideshow below).

Soft light hits a Terracotta Warrior outside Xi'an, Shaanci Province, China.

Greetings: The last post on my former blog was on April 12, 2010. Although that was only two weeks ago — a lot has happened. Its been a very busy month for me, full of travel, photographs, interesting places and very interesting people. During April my path went: Beijing —> Xi’an, Shaanxi Province —> Haoshan, Shaanxi Province —> Xi’an, Shaanxi Province —> Beijing — > Shanghai —> Beijing —> Shanghai —> Beijing —> Shenyang, Liaoning Province —> Kailu, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region —> Beijing —> Shanghai —> Beijing. Or Say that 10 times fast …

This is also the equivalent of:

• 10 plane rides (or the equivalent of 1 ride every 3 days, for 30 days)
• 15 car voyages (or the equivalent of 1 voyage every other day, for 30 days)
• 1 train excursion (or the equivalent of 1 voyage every 30 days)
• 3 bus rides (or the equivalent of 1 ride every 10 days)
• 2 donkey rides (or the equivalent of 1 ride every 15 days)
• 1 horse ride (or the equivalent of 1 ride every 30 days)
• 1 tractor ride (or the equivalent of 1 ride every 30 days)
• 1 joy ride in a police car sitting in the front seat — not the back (or the equivalent of 1 ride every 30 days)
• 10 tuktuk rides (or the equivalent of 1 ride every 3 days for 30 days)

Xi’an: Central China

All of the travel this month was work related, mostly to do with the Shanghai Expo, except this trip to Xi’an was on a whim. Xi’an is in central China an is known foremost of its geographic proximity to the Terracotta Warriors 兵马俑 . The shot at the top of this post made it into my China portfolio on the site — just a small bit of light at the end of the day hitting one of the statues. This was a little different than most of the standard stuff you see like in the slideshow directly above.

Like most Chinese tourist attractions, its always fun to see ancient things, surrounded by thousands of your closest friends. I’ve been in the Forbidden City at points where its similar to being at a rock concert. While I would go to the dig site if I were in Xi’an, I probably wouldn’t fly there just to do that. Also, like most things in China — one has to wonder about the validity of the statues and how much work has been done to them, to make it a viable tourist attraction.

Wikipedia says on the site:

The terracotta figures, dating from 210 BC, were discovered in 1974 by some local farmers near Xi’an, Shaanxi province, China near the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor. (Chinese: 秦始皇陵; pinyin: Qín Shǐhuáng di). The figures vary in height (183–195 cm – 6 ft–6 ft 5in), according to their roles, with the tallest being the generals. The figures include warriors, chariots, horses, officials, acrobats, strongmen, and musicians. Current estimates are that in the three pits containing the Terracotta Army there were over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which are still buried in the pits.[1] Many archeologists believe that there are many pits still waiting to be discovered.

While I was at the dig site, there were actually (what looked like) archeologists with brushes out and small tools digging away at the ground. This was pretty interesting to see in person, but beyond that — I wouldn’t recommend spending too much time in this area. On a positive note: the police are very friendly and like Western drinking partners. If your nice enough, they will even let you drive their cars …