China Revealed: Portrait Of The Rising Dragon by Basil Pao
China, a country of 1.3 billion people in the grip of an industrial revolution absorbing a large part of the world's resources, was until relatively recently a closed book to most in the West. With the advent of the Olympic Games in Beijing more and more people will visit this vast country and with that in mind the Hong-Kong based, internationally celebrated photographer and writer Basil Pao determined to travel through every province of China, recording history and landscape, people and places, to give a comprehensive snapshot of China today. By turns lyrical and exquisite, stark and brutal, his informative text and powerful photographs show a country in transition. A country whose four thousand years of cultural history are being rediscovered, and where new urban wealth and rural poverty coexist uneasily as a new regime tackles a legacy of corruption, of anarchy under Mao's cultural revolution and repression in its aftermath. CHINA REVEALED is a profoundly important and visually stunning record of one of the most powerful nations on earth.