East Goes West - China: Fifty Years Inside the People's Republic - Review

Afterimage, Sept, 2001 by David L. Jacobs

China: Fifty Years Inside the People's Republic

essay by Rae Yang

New York: Aperture

204 pp./$50.O0 (hb)

China: Fifty Years Inside the People's Republic Asia Society

New York City, New York

October 7, 1999-January 2, 2000

Royal Ontario Museum

Ottawa, Ontario

January 15-March 26, 2000

University of California at Berkeley Art Museum

Berkeley, California

April 2-June 18, 2000

Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Minneapolis, Minnesota

December 10, 2000-March 4, 2001

Lowe Art Museum

University of Miami

September 18-November 17, 2002

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

Washington, D.C.

February 22-May 16, 2004

China: Fifty Years Inside the People's Republic depicts a period of change that was as monumental as any country has ever experienced in so brief a time span. In the only essay in the book, "The Birth of a New China," Rae Yang writes with insight and passion about this period, relating the personal experiences of her family and herself to larger shifts in Chinese society. She skillfully evokes the political enthusiasm of the early 1 1950s, the later loss of faith in some of Mao's policies, the miseries of the Cultural Revolution, the changes in China's economy and society after Mao's death and the challenges that China currently confronts. The photographs that accompany Yang's essay provide a visual counterpoint for some of the trends that Yang explores. Owen Lattimore's portrait Mao and his associates (n.d.), for example, shows young, assured, smiling revolutionaries caught up in the moment of their emergence. Robert Capa photographs a group of young Chinese female cadets in full military dress, standing ere ct, their hands firmly on their hips. Their faces are upturned with closed eyes, as if they are absorbing power from the sky. These women, the photograph suggests, are able and willing to fight the good fight and defend the homeland. Jack Birns's 1949 photograph Trial of Revolutionary Committeemen shows several bound captives, shot through a chain link fence, being led by helmeted police down a street in Shanghai. In an uncredited 1967 photograph, Chinese soldiers attack an effigy of Uncle Sam, while in Li Zheng Sheng's 1968 photograph, made in Manchuria, thousands of Chinese hold likenesses of Mao. In both images there is a staged quality, unlike the more spontaneous photographs of the early days of the People's Republic. There are also photographs of ordinary Chinese, mostly by anonymous photographers, who seem to be enjoying their lives in spite of the endless proclamations about revolutionary new social programs. Yang's essay, along with the illustrative pictures, is an effective and nuanced overview of C hina during the late twentieth century. The essay focuses primarily on the Chinese people, rather than Chinese institutions, which is also the case for most of the photographs in the book.

The bulk of China: Fifty Years Inside the People's Republic consists of 20 photographic portfolios, all of which date from the early 1970s through the late 1990s. Street photography is the dominant style, which is especially apt in a country like China, where so much of peoples' lives are spent out of doors. Liu Heung Shing's photographs show the westernization of many urban Chinese in Beijing: young Chinese tourists in western dress taking snapshots of one another; three young Chinese men staring stonily into the camera through reflective sunglasses; four Chinese women in a beauty salon receiving permanents, their heads engulfed in elaborate wires. American photographer Reagan Louie also extracts gold from the streets; in his untitled 1987 photograph, a middle-aged Chinese man stands beside a bush of pink blossoms, holding a cage of birds in one hand and the butt of a cigarette in the other. He looks into the camera as he exhales, the smoke wafting out of his mouth toward the finches.

Brazilian-born photographer Sebastiao Salgado works the streets of Shanghai, capturing people in the midst of everyday occurrences that may seem odd or unusual to westerners. In Zhaoen Market (1998), two men squat in a filthy street, blithely eating food and drinking beer; in Construction Workers Resting (1998), workers sleep on The rafters of a highrise building; and in Nan Shi Street Market (1998), a vendor presides over his caged ducks, destined for the kitchen pot. In an especially strong image, Street Scene in the City's Center (1998), Salgado captures a number of young, well-dressed people crossing a pedestrian overpass. An old beggar lies beside his bowl in the middle of the overpass as the others walk by without paying him notice. A realistically rendered beer billboard becomes a picture within the picture, providing one of several ironic elements in the scene. But as is often the case in Salgado's work, the ironic and even surrealistic- touches never detract from his humanistic vision. The pedestrian s are moving on, the beggar is not going anywhere. But the beggar is not a pitiable figure; rather, he is one of many, conducting business as usual.

Most of the photographs in this collection are made in the provinces rather than in the best known cities. While this may be surprising, it accurately reflects the demographics of China. Although China boasts nearly 100 cities with populations over a million, and quite a few that exceed five million, the vast majority of the Chinese people live in the countryside. There are several portfolios that focus on the western provinces, and particularly Yunnan, one of China's most ethnically diverse areas. Yunnan is a very picturesque place, with magnificent mountains and wellwatered farmlands. These are beautiful villages where women wear brilliantly colored clothes, where people carry babies, produce and everything else on their backs, and where pigs and geese wander freely in the streets. Several portraits feature beautiful faces, some with deeply lined, wizened countenances. Yunnan is a unique and appealing place, but it is hardly representative of China as a whole. The number of photographs of Yunnan and other w estern provinces may reflect in part the interests of Europeans and Americans. For many years, western visitors have discovered "Shangri-La" in Yunnan, and it rates an A in Lonely Planet and other guidebooks. Considering the physical and societal enormity of China, however, the number of photographs devoted to the western provinces seems disproportionate.