Qingyuan, a city nestled among the mountains of northern Guangdong, has recently welcomed a group of special guests.
From November 13 to 23, invited by GDToday, four world-renowned photojournalists are touring Guangdong. Among them are winners and honorees of the most prestigious awards in photojournalism, including the Pulitzer Prizes, the World Press Photo, and NPPA Best of Photojournalism.
In 11 days, they are going to visit six different cities in Guangdong and capture the province's landscapes and people with their cameras. Between November 13 and 14, they travelled to the first stop, Qingyuan, where GDToday joined one of the photojournalists, Michael Nelson, and recorded his journey there.
Though an excellent photojournalist recognised by the World Press Photo and NPPA, Michael likes to identify himself as a "documentarian," a person who keeps recording his travels and adventures across the world as well as daily life with photos.
"I'm continually looking around and always try to get people in the picture," Michael shared with us his method of discovering the moments of photographing and his preference for people as subjects.
Luckily, Qingyuan is a city where there are plenty of people's stories.
On Zhongshan South Road, the old downtown area of the city of Lianzhou, the lively daily life scenes of local people soon intrigued Michael and helped him discover a good subject for a potential story. Among the people selling vegetables, playing games, and sewing along the pedestrian walk, he found many were old people who were "maybe a hundred years old" and "seemingly in very good health."
For Michael, the age of these people is where the story lies, and a professional journalist can dive deep into it by recording their life routine and suggesting some possible reasons for longevity.
"If you live the right life, and you are interacting with the community and all those types of things, that seems to help with your health," the man made his suggestions based on the observations of local people .
While Lianzhou is known as a longevity area with its above-average percentage of centenarians, the conical steep mountains in Liannan County are home to a large group of Yao people. At the local Yao villages, Michael and his fellow photojournalists got to experience their singing and dancing, long table banquets and bonfire celebrations, and see their ancient houses hugged up against the mountains.
On the paved roads that brought Michael and his fellows to the ancient home of the Yao people, he noticed a mixture of traditional and modern life.
"It seems like their lives have incorporated the conveniences of modern living, with running water, electricity, all those types of things, paved roads," he said. "But also one thing that is remarkable, that's really great, is that they still stress tradition," he recalled the Yao people either completely or partially donned in traditional costumes that he had seen all over Liannan.
"I hope that can last. And they keep that tradition because it's just nice, it's different, and it shows the diversity of mankind as well as the Chinese people," he wished.
When asked how he would sum up the trip in Qingyuan, he mentioned the word "diversity" once again, "diversity of the people and the landscapes of their homeland."
Reporter | Chen Siyuan
Videographer | Qin Shaolong, Guo Taotao
Video Editor | Qin Shaolong
Editor | Hu Nan, James, Shen He
