Tales from the Yellow Riverbank - June 2008
Philip Blenkinsop
pour Paris Match
Staring from a train headed north from the coalmining town of Linfen in Shanxi province, transfixed by the scenes passing me by. An industrial belt that unfolds seemingly endlessly, and I snap away as each bend and the scene it presents consolidates my feeling of woe and wonder. Soot-scented landscapes from my childhood-motorway-memories, and bleakness drips nostalgic.
The overall effect, after hours twisted uncomfortably craning my neck and coughing out of the window, is chilling. I have the feeling that the cities I pass through are centers of deception, unsustainable and flawed would-be-oases surrounded by cancerous tissue…. The lights and the hustle and bustle give an aura of “normality”, while on the outskirts, the landscapes speak with grim reality.
I set out for industry-scarred locales in the vicinity of the river, not with a view to condemning them, but to bear witness to the spirit of the population living in their midst, the hardships they endure, and whatever contrasts might present themselves along the way. It fast had the makings of a sad road trip: factories closed, poisoned villagers and life in the shadows of chimneys and cooling towers.
Preview
I happened upon funeral preparations in a field for a man who had died – a sudden and unnatural death. I prized images gently from the situation: the family who would have preferred me not to be there, and neighbors who indulgently tolerated my presence as a welcome distraction from the extended and exhausting mourning. I photographed briefly and tentatively, very aware of the uneasy and fleeting relationship which we all shared and had silently agreed upon.
People listened incredulously as I told them that in my country, the laws prevented, in most cases, the burial of a relative on your own land. Days on the road were occasionally uplifting, in as much as the courage of the people I met and photographed was both inspiring and touching, but rarely not depressing to see the scale of the penumbra, and scale is something that fast hits you in China. Before setting out, I had tentatively marked in my mind a naively ambitious route that would have taken me through five provinces.
Arriving in one town, nerves frayed from a seemingly fruitless, frustrating and exhausting day’s journeying, we pulled over to ask locals where the town’s train station was in the hope of making my destination by nightfall by other means. After stopping three times to ask directions, I turn to my translator and managed a casual: “Well?” She turned to me, not quite pulling her hair out, and replied: “It’s still not clear if there is a station in the town.” At the time of writing, still little is clear.
I am preparing to return, this time to Lanzhou on the Yellow River, to follow it North through Ningxia Huizu Zizhiqu to Inner Mongolia, and to learn better how to deal with my frustrations. It is very much a personal trip, free of journalistic constraints, where the flow of the story is determined as much by a bend in the river as a wrong turn.
Philip Blenkinsop Bangkok, July 7, 2008
