"I witnessed an entire nation going all out to do one thing, and the process amazed me. I realized it was definitely not 1+1+1+1=4; when you add it all up, it can even reach 50."
On September 29, at the press conference for "Old Roads, New Connections: A Journey by Liu Heung Shing" held at the Sea World Culture and Arts Center in Shenzhen, renowned photographer Liu Heung Shing spoke about his shooting experiences over the past few years. From early 2023 to the end of 2025, he traveled across 21 countries and 50 regions, covering a cumulative distance of 267,000 kilometers, using his unique perspective to tell the stories unfolding along the Belt and Road.
On November 14, the exhibition "Old Roads, New Connections: A Journey by Liu Heung Shing" will open at the Sea World Culture and Arts Center in Shenzhen and run until February 28, 2027. As a key cultural project during the APEC meeting in Shenzhen, it is also the world's first major documentary photography exhibition to comprehensively document development on the ground along the entire Belt and Road.
The press conference. Photo by 33live, an IP Guangdong creator.
"The Hardest Thing in My Life"
Liu's photography career has spanned more than half a century.
He worked for Time Magazine and the Associated Press (AP), serving as a senior foreign correspondent and chief photographer for the AP for 15 years. He was the first Chinese photographer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography.
The press conference. Photo by 33live, an IP Guangdong creator.
Through his lens, grand history often emerges from the lives of ordinary people. Over the years, he has documented China amid the changes of the times, and his work has become a window through which the world can understand China.
His attention to China is inseparable from his upbringing.
Liu was born in Hong Kong. As a child, he moved with his mother to Fuzhou, where he lived and attended school, and later received his education in China's Hong Kong and the United States. These varied life experiences led him to think about China's relationship with the world from an early age.
"My educational experience taught me that if China changes, a country this large, with such a civilization and so many people, is bound to affect the world."
For this reason, when the Belt and Road Initiative was proposed and steadily advanced, he keenly realized: "If this can be achieved, it will change the landscape of the 21st century."
He turned his lens to the Belt and Road, retracing the route of the ancient Silk Road and walking the road of connectivity anew in the new era.
Liu Heung Shing taking photographs. Photo by the interviewee.
"The work of the past three or four years may have been the hardest thing in my life. Because the Earth is so big, you have to be on the ground and experience the breadth of this project for yourself." The long journeys were only part of the difficulty. Liu had to constantly travel to unfamiliar countries, cities and construction sites, engage with different companies, builders and local people, and also avoid duplicating his images.
A young transnational couple in Xinjiang, Chinese and foreign builders working side by side on Indonesia's Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway, Wenzhou overseas Chinese entrepreneurs who have put down roots in Italy's textile industry, and Chinese volunteers who have gone to Africa to devote themselves to wildlife conservation … As the journey extended, one ordinary face after another connected the diverse facets of civilizations.
Today, these photographs have been collected into the book Old Road, New Connections: China Builds A Different World, leaving a visual archive of the Belt and Road.
A clock and watch stall selling Chinese-made goods at a local market in Qazvin, northern Iran. Photo by Liu Heung Shing.
The world comes to China as an exhibition coincides with APEC meeting in Shenzhen
In taking these photographs, Liu maintained his characteristic humanistic perspective. He focused mainly on three groups of people—builders, those going about their daily lives and those bridging cultures. To him, his camera captures more than a factory, a railway or a port; it records a new way of living together.
Three years of travel yielded a vast collection of photographs. As these images move from the pages of a book into the gallery, finding a clear narrative thread through them has become a challenge the exhibition must address.
Models from Africa, Russia and China wearing wigs made in China.
Organized by China Merchants Culture | Design Society, the "Old Roads, New Connections: A Journey by Liu Heung Shing" exhibition will use photography to connect the civilizational heritage of the ancient Silk Road with the contemporary implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative. Internationally renowned curator Karen Smith and experienced French architect Margo Renisio are responsible for the exhibition's curation and design, respectively.
Karen Smith. Photo by 33live, an IP Guangdong creator.
For Smith, one of the challenges is how to convey such a vast geographical scope and such complex stories clearly.
Smith said the team needed to give visitors an overview of the many different countries, show them where each country and region is located, and weave in many complex storylines. To achieve this, the exhibition will use a distinctive display format to retrace Liu's journey, drawing visitors into the world behind the photographs.
Shenzhen holds a special place in this journey. Liu first visited the city in the late 1970s, when it looked very different from the city people know today.
Liu said Shenzhen's transformation from a fishing village into the city it is today also embodies the collective wisdom of the Chinese people—their diligence and pragmatism. In his view, these same qualities enable China to complete every project it undertakes along the Belt and Road on time and to the required quality standards.
When Liu first embarked on the "Old Road, New Connections" project, he had never imagined that Shenzhen would host the APEC meeting. Over the past few years, his travels have allowed him to witness China reaching out to the world. Now, the exhibition and APEC meeting will come together in Shenzhen, bearing witness to the world coming to China.
Text | Lin Lu, Zhang Xuanzhen, Zheng Yiling (intern)
