Three Gorges Migrants Through the Lens of Li Feng
The creation of China’s Three Gorges Dam buried the past and overturned the lives of millions. Tracking these changes across the years: one of the country’s greatest photographers.
A Probe International Exclusive
As we approach the 30-year mark since construction of the world’s largest dam first began, we are pausing to take a look back over the years through the lens of one of China’s most celebrated photographers, Li Feng.
It is our good fortune that Li Feng felt called to bear witness to the lives that this massive undertaking transformed. To that end, we have curated five galleries focused on Li Feng’s extraordinary commitment to history in the making and a 27-year odyssey made up of moments.
And there are so many moments captured by Li Feng: the sheer scale of the project, the awkwardness of transition, the violence of transformation and the trauma of relocation; scenes of calm juxtaposed against the force of change in the present moment to disappear the past.
We see in these moments: sadness, joy, ruptures of beauty (a man carrying a tree from his hometown on his back) … resilience, entrepreneurialism, celebration, ceremony, hope, despair. Along with new beginnings, ancestral treasures and memorials are entombed overnight by the dam reservoir’s impoundment. Throughout, Li Feng records glimpses of life in all of its grand wonder – including a woman who sleeps outside to chase wild pigs away so they won’t eat her corn.
It seems that no matter what happens, the spirit finds a way. Time is another story. It is worthwhile to consider that what lies buried now may not stay gone forever.
The first gallery follows below in our Li Feng spotlight on Three Gorges migrants through the years. Stay tuned for more.
Gallery One
In November, 1992, local farmers carried sand and earth in backpacks from the riverside to higher ground for the construction of the new county town, Badong, in Hubei Province.
On January 17, 1999, a group of migrants waited for their cargo to be released at a dock in Wanzhou County in the Three Gorges Reservoir area.
By November 15, 1999, various government organs and units in the old county seat of Zigui, in the Three Gorges Reservoir area, had been moved away. A new county town was built more than 30 kilometres from the old town, near the dam site of the Three Gorges project. But a large number of migrants in the old county seat had not yet been resettled. So, in that year, the State Council made a major adjustment to the resettlement policy and decided to move more than 130,000 migrants to other provinces in the country.
On March 2001, before the Qingming (Tomb Sweeping Day), Zhang Jianguo and his wife from Maoping Village held a ritual to pay their respects to their ancestors and family members who had passed away. They conducted their observance on the slope of the reservoir near the dam site, even though the graves of their ancestors were long gone. The Three Gorges Dam was under construction at this time.
On June 5, 2002, a demolition site at the old county seat of Badong in Hubei Province.
A migrant had just bought a new TV set in the county town of Badong and carried it back home with the help of his backpack. This photograph was taken in 2002.
In May 2002, during the Dragon Boat Festival, descendants of Qu Yuan gathered at the old Qu Yuan Temple to pay their last respects to one of the greatest poets in China’s history. The old temple would be demolished due to the impoundment of the reservoir, and another temple would be built in the new county seat of Zigui, near the dam site of the Three Gorges project. The white banner reads: “In the Dragon Boat Festival, the people of Guizhou commemorate the 2,280 years since the patriotic Chu Master threw himself into the river.”
On June 1, 2003, the Three Gorges project officially commenced impoundment of the reservoir. At the old signal station in Qingtan, Hubei Province, station staff watch the ships going up and down through binoculars, directing traffic navigation with signals.
On June 10, 2003, sitting in his boat near the Kui Men in Fengjie County, fisherman Wang Jinxi said: “I have been fishing here for more than 30 years, but this is the first time I have seen the water level rising so high and flowing into the whole of the Fengxiang Gorge.” (The Fengxiang Gorge would become completely flooded by the reservoir when the water level rose even higher in several years’ time). The water level of the Three Gorges Reservoir reached 135 metres that day, completing the first phase of impoundment. A total of approx. 1.3 million people would make way for the entire project in the Three Gorges Reservoir area. Around 36.7% of migrants lived below the water level of 135 metres.
About the Photographer – Li Feng
Born in 1973, Li Feng is one of the most famous photographers in China. In 2007, his photograph, “Monkeys Waiting for Experiment,” won the Gold Award in National Geographic’s Global Photography Competition, In 2014, his photo series, “Three Gorges Migrants After 20 Years,” won the Gold Medal in the 3rd National Photography Exhibition of China. He has published several books, such as “Atlas of Wildlife in China’s Three Gorges,” “Images of the Old City” and “Home in the Old City of Yichang”.
His photographic works are rich in subject matter, but the most widely known and highly acclaimed is his continuous focus on Three Gorges migrants. Since 1995, Li Feng has been present to capture almost every historical moment of the Three Gorges Dam’s construction.
Li Feng’s hometown of Yichang is located at the exit of Three Gorges – the boundary between the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and the historical main route in and out of Sichuan. From Yichang’s Xiling Gorge on, Wu Gorge and Qutang Gorge follow, in that order. The Yangtze River, which cuts through these three gorges, is known locally as the Gorge River or the Chuan River.
Li Feng first photographed the Three Gorges’ migration in June 1995. At that time, shortly after graduating from college, Li Feng, a photography enthusiast, took a boat from his hometown of Yichang upstream to Zigui, which is located in the heart of the Three Gorges Reservoir area. At the wharf in Zigui County, he photographed a young boy carrying a cooler.
The 7-year-old boy, Liu Wei, is from Xiangjiadian village in Zigui County. Xiangjiadian Village is the closest village to the Three Gorges Dam, and therefore became the earliest village in the Three Gorges Reservoir area to undergo relocation. In the afternoon of that day, Liu Wei moved on to the outskirts of Yichang by boat along with 184 migrants from the same village. “The Three Gorges Millions Migration” officially kicked off, and Li Feng happened to witness this moment.
From that day on, Li Feng embarked on a long journey. In the 27 years since then, he has resolutely focused his camera on the Three Gorges and its migrants. “From that incredible photo in 1995, I felt that these people were truly worthy of my record,” he said.
The period from 2000 to 2010 was the busiest and most lively time for the entire Three Gorges. Li Feng headed to the Three Gorges whenever he could. On January 20, 2002, Fengjie County was blasted into oblivion – a thousand-year-old city on the Yangtze River. The blast also marked the beginning of the full-scale demolition and clearing of the Three Gorges Reservoir. Two months later, the old county town of Zigui, with a history of more than 1,700 years, was also demolished and blasted. Li Feng was on the scene.
In 2003, the entire reservoir area officially began filling on June 1. That was a day the whole world turned to watch. On that day, Li Feng found a nest of birds in front of the Three Gorges Dam. It had become flooded after the river rose. Every day, the Yangtze River rose 3 meters or 5 meters, until June 15, when it rose to a height of 135 meters. Many old counties along the river sank to the bottom. All of this was followed by Li Feng through his camera lens.
“People” were always at the center of Li Feng’s focus. In the beginning, he photographed along the 600-kilometers of the Yangtze River in the Three Gorges Reservoir area. Around 2001, he began to follow the footsteps of migrants as they moved out of the Three Gorges in large numbers. He photographed babies just over a month old, migrating with their parents to Guangzhou. He photographed the migrants taking with them pigs, chickens and goats. He also photographed them trying to carry a tree from their hometown in their bags when they left.
According to Li Feng, history is not only related to physical change, but also to the changing emotional structure of the people who occupy that physical space. He continues to go to the Three Gorges to record and search.
“What is a Three Gorges person? How has the emotional intensity of the Three Gorges people changed over the decades? What is the impact of everything that happens in the gorge on people? What is the impact on the first generation migrants, the second generation, and the third generation? What will happen to it in the future? I hope to answer these questions through a lifetime of shooting.” ~ Li Feng, from an interview with China’s People magazine.