China: Portrait of a People

What Peter Hessler did in his memoir River Town, Tom Carter does with China: Portrait of a People. A new wave of camera-toting expats will soon come to China hoping to follow in Carter's footsteps.I write this within a week of coming back to America after a year of teaching English at university in southern Hunan. While it was a wonderful experience, I was eager to get back home and move on to bigger and better things. But then Carter's book came in the mail from Amazon. My immediate reaction: every expat coming to China should have one for the inevitable day culture shock strikes; the book should come wrapped in white paper with a red cross and the instructions: "For prevention and treatment of culture shock. Open if you have any of the following symptoms..." Just paging through it compels me to return to see what I can see, do what I can do, and meet whoever I can meet.About the size of a Wendy's ¾ Pound Triple with Cheese and just as juicy, Carter's China: Portrait of a People is the perfect gift for old China hands and armchair explorers alike. But before I tell you why, let me first say that I have beef with his book. While the author has clearly gone above and beyond the duty of any artistic photojournalist, he has neglected to document two very important regions: China's renegade province Taiwan and the California Special Economic Zone. Despite these glaring omissions, I give the book five red stars.The photography pulls the reader along a journey filled with joy, wonder, sadness, awe, and cognitive dissonance. What fun! Pictures of people from all social strata doing all manner of things capture the essence of this unique time in world history. As I read between the lines (or looked between the photos?), it struck me just how social savvy the author must be and how much social support he must have had in order to complete such a journey. The photography is intimate; like good literature, readers see into another's soul, feel another's feeling, and experience a moment in the life of another person. Nine out of ten Confucianists agree China: Portrait of a People cures autism.While each picture is worth 10,000 words as one reviewer already noted, the well written prose complements the imagery. Captions provide snippets of the subject's story and interesting tidbits of Chinese history, culture and trivia. The prose is informative, witty, literate, and peppered with anecdotes about some of the hardships endured during the author's travels. The factoids presented herein will make any reader an instant MVP on China Trivia Night and gain face with Chinese friends and acquaintances.Carter backpacked 56,000 miles and visited 200 cities and villages to gather material for this book. So yeah, the author did a nice job going on a little holiday to take some pictures of China. But I still have two questions. Does he like Chinese food and does he know how to use chopsticks?

Tom Carter's photography book CHINA: Portrait of a People (second printing 2013, Blacksmith Books) is a remarkable photo-essay of China today, broad in scope and comprehensive of subject. Even when contrasted with the work of his predecessors, discussed below, there is something more about this book: a remarkable depth of insight, understanding, and feeling that Carter (1973-), an indigent wanderer from San Francisco, acquired for a people whose language he knew only slightly at the time he took the photos. Anyone able to overcome barriers to communication without knowing the language is an extraordinary person.Of the 100+ reviews on Amazon already posted, many readers regard Carter's Portrait as a surprising view into a "rapidly disappearing" China as the country dynamically thrusts forward into the new millennia. However, as the photos of John Thompson, Felice Beato, and other photographers of the 19th century are my point of departure, their work compared to Portrait illustrates substantially greater changes in China than any since 1949. Memory of more recent changes seems concentrated in metropolitan areas and along the coastlands rather than in the hinterland traipsed by Carter; perhaps such changes appear weighty because of a foreshortened time scale and accelerated development.It is unusual for a book to be a revelation for such a broad spectrum of readers as CHINA, Portrait of a People has been: besides travelers who have never been to China, and expat residents proud of their knowledge of the country yet unfamiliar with the greater landscape, the book has revealed to native Chinese much of their own country they knew little about. The book expands boundaries, reveals "undiscovered countries," and is likely to rouse from their indifference to China almost anyone who looks through these photos.Carter's Portrait shows that "China is not just one place, one people, but 33 distinct regions populated by 56 different ethnicities, each with their own languages, customs and lifestyles." We are told that the author backpacked 56,000 miles and visited over 200 cities and villages to gather material for this book, suffering privation, discomfort, and disease to complete this essay. The final result obviously made every step of his journey worthwhile.This review is continued at the Old China Books book blog - blog.oldchinabooks.com CHINA: Portrait of a People

What nobody mentions, is that the book is the size of a CD-ROM case, and as thicker than the New Testament, which makes it very uncomfortable to read. The contents have good introductions, and the photos are fine, but it should be noted that all photos was taken with a point and shoot, and despite most f them being nice photographs, the quality of high resolution photography is vacant.

Por los comentarios de la gente y la descripción pensé que iba a ser otra cosa. No está mal, las fotografías merecen la pena, simplemente es que no encaja con lo que estaba buscando.

Such good photos of the country lesser known to most of us

Regalo molto gradito.

This pictorial book on China is without doubt the worst presentational/ puplicational disaster of all time bar none.This a great pity when the outstanding work of an author is destroyed by an incompetent publisher.My complaints are as follows- 1)the stupid size ofthe book -6 by 6 by 2.5 inches when it should have been at least A4. 2)The 632 pages are unnumbered so you cant find any thing easily. 3)The book is so thick that you crack the spine when you open it. 4)Pictures go so far into the centre that they cant be seen properly. 5)Many of the pictures are untitled and meaningless. 6)The text is so small it needs a magnifying glass. 7)On my copy there was not one word on the cover-back or front but only a 3 inch wide wrapper.Despite all the above thiss could have been an excellent book with some thought.Definately not recommended.