An hour or so out of Nanjing, well away from the factories and cars of the bustling city, a small farm houses hundreds of dogs and cats. The animals are sick or injured or have been abandoned, but it's no matter to Ha Wenjin or the army of volunteers who care for the animals. Connected with a small clinic in the city, the farm takes Nanjing's unwanted pets and strays and gives them a life of leisure and freedom. The no-kill shelter, a rarity in the country, provides the animals with shelter, food, love and care in a city known as a source for dog and cat meat for southern China's exotic food needs. You can license these images or purchase prints at my archive: Saving Nanjing's Cats and Dogs

Hekou feels like a brand new town. On the border between Vietnam and China, the city has been relatively under-developed due to Yunnan Province's poor transportation infrastructure. Now, a new highway linking this border region to Kunming, the provincial capital, and thus also to the rest of China, steady import and export business will make the region grow quickly. No doubt this growth will be accompanied by a rise in drug and sex traffic, as well.

A few scenes from Pukou, a suburb of Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China. Once the terminal point of an important early Chinese railway line, Pukou's economy fell by the wayside when the first bridge to Nanjing over the Yangtze River was built in 1968.

Last January, I spent some time in southern Yunnan Province, including some time in the rice terraces of Yuanyang County. One of the picturesque regions of China that fills many stereotypes of the country, the rice terraces have long provided a living from the many ethnic minorities in mountains of the region. For obvious reasons, the area has been an attraction to tourists, but its remoteness has kept it relatively protected. Now investors and developers see an opportunity, especially as Yunnan province develops its transportation infrastructure.

The city of Kunming, capital of China's most culturally and ecologically diverse province, occupies a conflicted space in the rapidly urbanizing country. Pulled by the need to modernize and compete in the global marketplace and the need to maintain and protect its cultural legacy, the city finds itself at war with itself. Development is necessary to remain an economic powerhouse in the region, assuring continued prosperity for the future. But, as is seen elsewhere in China and the developed world, industrial and technological modernization is almost necessarily at odds with an agenda of protection for the environment. And while environmental concerns might fall to the push of modernization elsewhere, Yunnan's two largest economic drivers, tourism and agriculture, depend on a pristine environment. The government has erected China's first environmental police force in the region, in fact. Meanwhile, though, the city chugs along with construction and demolition, shopping and transportation. The city has come resemble most others in China in that respect, but there's an underlying awareness that the city's toll on the environment--those beautiful cloud-filled blue-sky days, the surrounding tree-covered hills and mountains, the water that runs through the city--must be addressed.

It's no wonder that Haerbin's Siberian Tiger Park is as well-known as it is. The park houses more than 100 of of the endangered Manchurian Tiger, also known as the Siberian Tiger, in a large grassland enclosure, and, most famously, allows visitors to ride in buses among the tigers and feed live chickens, cows, and other meat to the tigers. The park is partially funded by private donations and may serve a role in the preservation of the species, which numbers at less than 400 animals in the wild. One of the oddest features of the park is the visitors' center. Shops there sell toys, stuffed animals, hats, and other items made from tiger fur, and various displays provide information about the species' history. Additionally, one room is dominated by a large aquarium filled with wine and a whole tiger skeleton. The wine sells for 780 renminbi (about US$110.00) per half kilogram of liquid. People who drink the wine believe it is beneficial to one's health, increasing one's power, virility, and strength. The wine and other tiger products created from tigers at the park draw much criticism from animal rights activists and conservationists, and with good reason. While the park claims to preserve the species, little is apparently being done to rehabilitate the tigers, ready them for the wild, or, really, do anything other than entertain tourists and provide fodder for traditional Chinese medicine products and souvenir trinkets.
 
You can see more images available for licensing at my archive: Harbin Siberian Tiger Park