Notes about China's ethnic minorities

I've been uploading some of my many street portraits today, mostly those from my time in China in 2005. While there, in addition to the standard, "de rigeur" tourist cities of Beijing and Shanghai, we visited some of the most interesting places I've ever been--and parts of China that most Westerners never get to learn about, much less to see.

So I'd like to introduce you (those of you to whom this is unfamiliar) to some of the many ethnic minority cultures of China. In addition to the dominant ethnic and cultural group, called the Han, there are officially 55 other ethnic cultures (and really hundreds more which are not officially recognized by the Chinese government). The primary cultural groups represented in my photos are from two provinces: (1) Xinjiang (the very westernmost province of China, bordering India, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and many other central Asian nations) and (2) Yunnan, in southwest China in the "foothills" of the Himalayas and bordering Tibet and Burma.

In Xinjiang, the largest ethnic minority are the Uyghurs (sometimes spelled Uighurs), a Turkic and Muslim group that is believed to be the second largest stateless cultural group next to the Kurds. Movements to break away and create East Turkestan in the last century were met with resistance by the Chinese, and the Uyghurs today still face a great deal of oppression and violence--as well as cultural displacement and attempts at assimilation--at the hands of the current PRC government of China.

We visited Kashgar, Urumqi and Turpan, three cities along the ancient Silk Road. The culture is bright, vibrant, and colorful, and the people were among the warmest and most open to outsiders (like our group of American educators) that I've ever met. They were thrilled to have me capture their images with my camera, and I find their gazes into the camera and at me to be deeply touching. These are the best portraits I've ever found, and I believe they truly capture the cultural souls of their subjects.

In Yunnan province, we spent the majority of our time in two small cities: Lijiang, home to the Naxi ethnic group and a remarkably picturesque and quaint city with a thriving old town, and Zhongdian (now renamed "Shangri-La" to bring in tourist dollars), home primarily to ethnic Tibetans and also home to the magnificent Songzanlin Tibetan Buddhist monastery. We spent a day in a Naxi village near Lijiang where we were welcomed into local homes and schools and had a chance to observe village life.

I hope you enjoy the portraits. I have no model releases other than the assent of these gracious people to allow me to take their photos, and I hope that my portrait gallery portrays them with the pride and respect that they and their cultures deserve.

Given the events taking place in Lhasa, Tibet, and other Tibetan cities in China and the Himalayas this week, I hope that these images will help all of us to reflect upon the need to preserve the dignity and diversity of human cultures in the face of political oppression, on the one hand, and the homogenizing forces of globalization, on the other.

I also will continue to add some more recent portraits from my visit a few months ago to western Turkey, particularly the town market at Selcuk and some street scenes from Ayvalik (a fishing town on the Aegean coast) and Bergama.

Comments are much welcomed. Thanks for visiting my galleries!

Pam