Customer Reviews

CHINA: Portrait of a People

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I am a Mainland Chinese who grew up during the 10 years of Cultural Revolution. At the end of my graduate study in 1986, I went on a hitch-hiking trip to Tibet with a friend of mine. We had 45 RMB Yuan, a camera, and 4 rolls of films with us. We spent a month on the road, riding in the back of coal-hauling trucks, on the make-shift engine cover in the front of old buses, in the back of tractors, climbing over hills, and riding on the back of horses. We slept in horse stables, tents, and sometimes, for 1.5 yuan a night, we got to sleep in a bed...

That was the highlight of my travel experience: 1 month, 4 provinces, and 100 photos.

Tom Carter has done this for 2 years across 33 provinces in China. When I looked at the photos in his book, my eyes were swelled with tears the whole time: His photos have so accurately and vividly captured the features and the characteristics of the people from this most diversed country in the world that I call my motherland! Without reading the captions, I can tell that that young man is from Guangxi, that girl is from Sichuan, and those folks are from Heilongjiang. I can hear them talk in their dialects. I can feel their hopes. I can touch their spirits... They have aroused my desire to talk with them and laugh with them again. They reminded me so much of everything I saw in my little excursion over twenty years ago. It was a journey down the memory lane but it is more. It tells me things that I have no experience of since I have been gone away for almost 20 years...

I have lived in the United states for many years. When I go to bookstores, I am naturally attracted to the sections where I can find books about China. I have not seen another book like this - so real and so recent, capturing all the changes that have happened in China in the last 20-30 years while at the same time showing the essence and heritage of the culture.

I hope more people will read this book.

There are more than 1.3 billion people in China. Besides the majority Han Chinese, the population includes 56 ethnic groups numbering over one hundred million. Over the course of 2 years and 35,000 miles, photojournalist Tom Carter captured it ALL on film.

For their historical value alone, the 800+ photos in Portrait are priceless. I highly doubt if there will ever be another book about China like this one. Carter's anthropological-like study of China stands apart in its genre, as it focuses expressly on the PEOPLE of China. In addition to documenting the everyday life of "ordinary" people, Carter also backpacked to the most remote areas of China to observe reclusive ethnic minorities such as the red-turbaned Pai Yao minority of northern Guangdong and the resplendent Dong and Miao tribes of eastern Guizhou.

From Inner Mongolian nomads to newlyweds in Hong Kong, from the teenage girl living in Chengdu dressed like an American punk rocker to the soot covered coal miner in Southern Shanxi, Carter's camera documented the complexity and diversity of China like no other book ever has (or likely ever will). There is an old saying that a picture is equal to a thousand words. In CHINA: Portrait of a People, each picture is worth TEN thousand words, maybe more.

The consensus amongst backpackers is that China is probably the single most challenging country in the world to visit. As such, in order to reach certain locations, Carter had to travel on foot into some seriously rugged terrain. To get an idea what I'm talking about, consider that China, almost the size of the United States, uses only sixteen percent of its land for growing crops. The rest is either mountains or desert.

To take the up-close and personal pictures in CHINA: Portrait of a People, Carter also risked jail multiple times; was stranded in Tibet; faced exhaustion and hunger; was beaten by drunks; plagued by a nearly-fatal viral infection, and risked being shot by North Korean border guards. And that was only the first year!

If you plan to visit China, buy this book before you go. On the other hand, if you are an armchair tourist who never strays far from home, Carter's Portrait will not disappoint. The warmth of the Chinese comes cross in every image from cover to cover. You will laugh along with the Tibetan nomads seeing their photo for the very first time, and scratch your head at the eight-year-old acrobat student at Wuqiao bending herself like a folded sheet of paper.

Between the covers of Portrait, you will start a vicarious journey visiting China like few photographers have ever accomplished. With this thick, 600-page book, you too can travel on this 35,000 mile journey without ever leaving your home. Or better, it will inspire you to make a similar journey.

There is no way that this review can do justice for the monumental accomplishment that is CHINA: Portrait of a People. Seeing is believing.

Lloyd Lofthouse, author of "My Splendid Concubine"

I've been living in the country for 20+ years, so it's no easy task to capture my attention--or hold it--with a "China" book. But somehow Carter has managed to do so.

Maybe it's the smiles: Warm, infectious, genuine. A positively ancient yet bubbly Beijing couple on the eve of their 55th wedding anniversary. The Yao woman whose front teeth checked out long ago. Or an adorable Uighur girl with a dainty, coffee-colored lace headdress.

Carter documents the astounding variety of the peoples of China, face by face, but he also does a good job of contrasting architecture in different regions. My favorites: The myriad flat rooftops of Tibet's second city, Shigatse; perfectly circular "tulou" communal houses of the Hakka in Fujian; and a sea of sloping roof tiles rippling over Lijiang, Yunnan, perhaps China's best-preserved traditional village.

Just one page of text precedes each of the 33 chapters introducing a municipality, province or autonomous region. Brief, to the point, but not formulaic. Zhejiang is encapsulated by an ancient poem, Qinghai via the words of a 10-year-old Tibetan girl who is worried that her family's nomadic life is doomed, and the humorous text referring to expatriates in the capital, "China's unofficial 57th minority group."

By no means is it all exotic headdresses, ancient architecture and winning smiles; this is not your standard coffee-book tome. Carter doesn't flinch as he profiles victims of industrial accidents, fire and mental illness, some reduced to begging for a living. But, curiously, even they seem to retain a bit of dignity as seen through his eyes.

I like this book. The pictures aren't meant to be National Geographic. They are meant to be "in the moment." The author talks about this in his introduction. And it works. He isn't trying to convince you to love China or to hate it. He is just showing you what he sees.

This book comes with heart that many books of a similar nature miss because they are striving for perfection. When you study a foreign culture, you don't have the luxury of perfect. You only have the stunning beauty of being there in that moment. And you live and love and take pictures. Think of this as someone's summer vacation (but it is so much more) where they want you to look at their pictures of this amazing trip they took. The photos speak for the author.

Sometimes they are not as crisp as a perfectionist might desire, but I guarantee you will be pulled in to this book. How can you escape the intensity of the direct gaze of such a multi-cultural people? Dive into China through the lens of a guy with a camera and a backpack. Experience a different way of living with few words. Imagine yourself there with a limited grasp of the language but a love of humanity.

Then, I think, you may just grasp the true wonder of this amazing book by Tom Carter.

A friend recommended this book to me. I must tell you that I thought I had seen all photography books and have seen pictures from places all over the world. But, my friend insisted it was great - so I got it. WOW is all I can say. I have traveled to China from the US and thought I had seen most of the country. Now I see I have probably only been to the tourist parts of China. The author, Tom Carter, takes one on a journey far beyond what an average tourist may see in the country. It is the the "real" and "everyday" China. But is much more than that. You see not just some of the sights, but something that tells much more of the story. The sights and the people...their everyday life, their landscape, their way of surviving in a changing country.

From the picture of the coal miner with his amazing face and expression - to a child's laugh. Photographer Tom Carter was able to not only view but capture a China that the rest of us could only imagine. If you had told me such a country existed beyond what the state-media portrayed - I probably would not have believed it. But, in his genius to sneak some shots, befriend locals, and take pictures at perhaps the most ridiculous times, Tom Carter has captured a country and a people that is very foreign to most Westerners. The book is much larger than expected and the photographs themselves are much more personal than one may expect from a first-time photo-journalist. But, this book will put Tom Carter on the map and so much that he may have trouble in the future traveling to such places as an unknown photographer.

I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone. If you have an interest in China, photography books, or just capturing the world - Tom Carter has done it and it is amazing.

I'll just state that this book should be used in all American schools as a personal introduction to China, or -- as the author explains -- "the 33 provinces of the fourth largest country in the world," which includes "56 different ethnicities, each with their own languages, customs and lifestyles."

CHINA: Portrait Of A People is an amazing book. No less remarkable for its unpretentiousness. The author and photographer, Tom Carter, is no crusty academic, and what he provides here is a personal (and personable) view: a voyager's log in part and what is essentially a superior example of guerrilla photojournalism. The book is divided into 33 chapters, one for each province, and before each chapter are his recollections of his difficulties traveling to the regions as well as episodes where Chinese individuals (see "I, Shen Mei Li," page 134) are allowed to speak for themselves, as well as fragments of poetry and other uniquely Chinese related material -- just enough to wet the appetite for the remarkable images -- some gritty, some even grotesque -- you are about to see.

Favorite images, sections? Hard to pick since there are so many. The photo-illustrated journey starts at Beijing ('the epicenter of the "center of the world,''' as Tom Carter writes) and concludes with Tibet ("Middle of nowhere, center of everywhere"). With more than 600 pages in between. (The images in this final section -- Tibet -- are among the most emotionally compelling and beautiful of the book.)

With a country as vast as China (and one as culturally and historically ancient), there's a lot to see and Tom Carter provides a vast array of images and views -- glimpses of a country on the cusp of a sweeping transformation: a great nation that still identifies as Communist while embracing new Capitalist ways. These photos then also provide historical artifacts as modernization plows away thousands of years of history.

The scope of this book is epic, yet broken down into satisfying sections. So it's user friendly. And again I would mention that the book's lack of pretension and self-conscious artiness lends it a down-to-earth charm. It's like a pilgrim's account of China experienced first hand and shared in photographs. And I found myself fascinated by certain details (the "hair salon girls," pgs. 28,169, 331 and the "double lucky" eyelids/cosmetic procedure), among other things.

Of the places I'd like to visit on account of this book, top of the list would be Tibet and places like the Portuguese-influenced Macau, and of course Beijing ("Chaoyang"). Then: remote Heilongjiang ("Harbin"), Inner Mongolia (which is one of the most beautiful sections of the book), coastal Shandong (birthplace of Confucius), Jiangsu (with its sad and bloody history of Japanese invasion), Fujian, Guangdong ("Dapu"), of course Hong Kong (for its urban, multi-cultural variety), Guangxi ( "Zhongliu"), Guizhou ("Zengchong"), Anhui ("Mukeng Zhuhai," the Bamboo Sea where Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was shot), Hunan ("Zhangjiajie" and "Fenghaung"), Henan ("Song Shan" for its 800-year-old Shaolin temple and its ancient association with Kung Fu), Shaabxu ("Xi'an" for the Bingmayong vault), Gansu ("Hexi" and "Langmusi" for its Tibetan yet almost Peruvian-appearing culture), Sichuan ("Jiuzhaigou" and "Emei Shan"), Yunnan ("Lijiang"), and once again Tibet (particularly "Lhasa").

Need I say more? For the world traveler and romantic in us all, this book will infect you with
enthusiasm, excitement, and curiosity for a place. And I can think of no higher praise for a book.

CHINA: Portrait Of A People by Tom Carter. Highly recommended.

A complex microcosm of the world is captured in the faces of those who comprise a quarter of Earth's population, depicted in this kaleidoscopic composure of life. Perhaps Shanghai Province is the most diverse. Smiles and sad faces greet readers, mimicked by stressful expressions on those of "China's Wall Street" investors. Carter has concocted a Rubik's Cube-view of China.

The Magic City of Hong Kong features "the best of Beijing and Bangkok, London and Las Vegas, New York and New Delhi. [T]here truly is nowhere else in the world like Hong Kong...China's wealthiest city." Originally a Portuguese colony, neighboring Macau has taken on the flavor of Las Vegas, where mega-hotelier Steve Wynn influenced Vegas-style over-the-top gaming resorts in China. The "Chinese have turned Macau into their own Sino-Sin City."

Carter chooses to depict China's peoples as they are: the hopeful, the deformed, the sad, those who toil in coal mines and "pink-light" districts. And the coldness of steel reflected in the faces of military personnel. This is a study of China, portrayed by the artistic eye of the photojournalist. As lyrics from Daniel Powter's song, Bad Day, would have us believe, "the camera don't lie." The soul of China is captured by Carter's camera and journalistic text. Perhaps the overwhelming charm of the camera to make people smile unites more than political open-door policies could ever fathom.

Carter's camera captures Xanadu, "the summer palace of Kublai Khan." A "rowdy drinker" in Chaoyang, Beijing Province, laughingly offers American-born Carter, who now lives in Beijing, the American single-finger salute. In shadows of gleaming glass-and-steel towers, ancient tiled pagoda-temple roofs crumble from neglect.

This is a somewhat voyeuristic view of the peoples who are the soul of China. The 33 chapters coincide with China's equal number of provinces. Most notable is the ever-present smile a camera generates. Contrasts abound: A street cleaner who earns $800 a year is featured daydreaming in front of a luxury-car dealership.

Poetry introduces each chapter/province, and not only the pictorial kind. From Chapter Ten, Zhejiang Province, poetic prose lures the wanderlust:

Lady Zhejiang here we must part,
For the next province awaits my embrace,
Sad wanderer once you conquer the East,
Where do you go?

Imagine capturing the spirit of fifty states in six hundred pages. Twelve pages for New York State would include only two for New York City. California would use up one pixel for each city and town.

Tom Carter has truly portrayed the "Portrait of a People." This is a must-read pictorial journey of eternal China.

---Reviewed by L. Dean Murphy

If your image of the people of China is anything other than 1.3 billion unique individuals with loves, losses, joys, struggles, passions and pressures just like yours, then you need this book.

Breaking the stereotype of inscrutibility, the people in these pages look you in the eye in a moving gesture of shared humanity. They come from every province of this vast nation, reflecting the rich cultural and ethnic diversity of a land with every imaginable landscape, climate and level of development.

In a country isolated from the rest of the world for long periods of its history, breaking through the barrier of otherness can be a challenge for foreign visitors. Tom Carter hasethn done the hard work for you.

If you are planning a trip to China, you need this book. Not just because it will give you ideas of cool places to visit, but because you'll come wanting to light up people's faces with a smile that touches their heart.

Even if you have no interest in China whatsover, you'll still find these portraits uplifting and heartwarming.

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?

A friend of mine gave me this book as a novelty gift because I was preparing for a business trip to Beijing. I was admittedly not looking forward to the visit (or slogging through a 650-page coffee table book for that matter), because, truth be told, the fear-mongering American media has done a fantastic job with filling our heads with anti-Chinese propaganda. And I, being a gullible American, have believed it. Up until now.

My trip was a success, as is this wonderful book, which I have not been able to put down since returning from China. Photojournalist Tom Carter has done a respectable job at portraying the Chinese fairly and neutrally. He has captured on camera ordinary people - people just like me and you - who are not out to take over the world (as our media would like us to believe), but rather are just living their normal lives from day to day.

Some of the pictures are of city folk enjoying their nouveau wealth, many more are of the peasantry who live in remote mountain villages. Every single face and place in this book, from rich to poor, urban to rural, has an interesting story to tell, and Carter has impressively managed to convey these stories not through words but through images.

My perception of the Chinese is now nothing like it was before. A trip to China, along with Carter's book, has opened my eyes. For anyone even the slightest bit interested in Chinese culture, or preparing for a trip to China: stop poisoning your head with American news and instead pick up a copy of this enlightening book.