Chinese New Year Festival 2007

After the wonderful experience of the Wittenberg residency I was even more eager to document the Han folk dances in China. Thus in 2007 I made my next visit to Beijing during Chinese New Year. Masters Wang and Yang gave me permission to videotape several special folk dance events they directed, and shared with me their immense knowledge about Han folk dance. With their guidance I also was able to photograph a wide variety of events that took place throughout the city.

The dances shared by these people—the Dongba shaman; the Tibetan farmers; the Waist Drum dancers; the celebrants during Chinese New Year—were precious to me. With many of them, I was afforded a rare chance to capture special moments in time before everything changed. The treacherous road up to the villages along the Jinsha River 金沙江 was slated for improvement through government efforts to open up rural areas to commerce. No doubt these developments have happened by now and the places I visited are vastly different.

Change was already afoot when I made my first visits to China at the turn of the millennium, with traditional clothing giving way to modern: In a store in Lijiang丽江village I tried on a traditional Minority costume and marveled at its beauty. As I returned the dress to the shopkeeper I asked why she didn’t wear it every day, rather than the contemporary clothing she wore. She immediately pointed out how cumbersome the traditional clothing was, compared to modern garb—very difficult to put on and therefore sometimes inconvenient and less comfortable. She said to me, “If you like it so much, why don’t you wear it every day?” I had to admit there was no arguing with common sense and pragmatism!

If I am able to return to visit these villages some day, I hope to find a balance between the old and the new, between beauty and pragmatism—and that these villagers still cherish their traditional culture even as they embrace the benefits of modernity.