One of my first assignments for Time Magazine is finally in print. I spent a few days in Guangzhou earlier this year shooting formal portraits of vegetable stall owners for an article on rising global food prices. A combination of natural disasters and inflation continues to create a spike in food prices across China. Affordable basic necessities such as electricity, food, water and transportation are always a mainstay of the Chinese Communist Party, but these increases seem to be beyond their control. Consumption of food across China is rising dramatically in line with increased wealth in both rural in urban areas. Everyone wants pork and extra rice at dinner. Many of the figures in the article are actually quite alarming. Global food prices already increased 39% over the past year, food production must increase 70% by 2050 to meet the demand of swelling populations and the average amount of meat people consume has doubled over the past three decades. Despite our profound ability to manipulate our environment, we are going to have to rectify many of our eating habits, not only to combat increased food demand, but also to stave off the rising spectre of obesity. Still, I am going to have my fill of tacos while I am in New York City this month.

I published another photograph in Time Magazine this week. Apparently it can be found in the international version and some of the domestic ones as well. They used a photo from my recent series New South China Mall: The Empty Temple of Consumerism for a China investment story entitled China Dreams. I also took some portraits for Time Magazine in Guangzhou last month for a story that should be published in the near future (can’t talk about it yet). However, the rebellion in Libya and disasters in Japan are consuming most news outlets right now and a lot of scheduled features are being pushed back. It was great working with the editors at Time Magazine. Hopefully more of my work will be in print soon.

A local billionaire built it, and they did not come. The South China Mall was the most ambitious and largest retail space every conceived in China, if not the world, when it opened in 2005. Constructed smack in the middle of the Pearl River Delta between Shenzhen and Guangzhou, about 4 million people live within six miles of it, 9 million within twelve miles and 40 million within sixty miles. Nonetheless, six years later, the South China Mall only maintains a 1% occupancy rate at best. This unabatedly empty temple to consumerism remains unfinished on top floors and is only sporadically visited thanks to the attached amusement park, Amazing World. For the time being dust and dismembered mannequins reign over the 6.5 million square foot venture. Although China might be the fastest growing consumer market in the world, the South China Mall reveals the vulnerability of this burgeoning economic giant. Also, check out this short film done on the place by Sam Green.

Just days before Barbie’s 50th birthday last March, the House of Barbie opened its doors in Shanghai and introduced China to over six floors of Barbie merchandise and services that catered to almost every need of a Barbie-princess-in-training. It was a full on Barbie assault from the start as you rode an entrance escalator bathed in pink light with the sound of giggling girls playing in the background. Aside from a daunting array of Barbie doll varieties, there was also a Barbie spa offering services such as the Plastic Smooth facial or Barbie Bust Firming treatment, a Barbie catwalk where girls can dress up as Barbie and put on their own fashion show, a Barbie design center where creatives can produce a custom-made Barbie, and a Barbie Cafe complete with Barbie-themed food and a pink martini bar. The Barbie spearhead into China came with a US$30 million dollar price tag and huge expectations. Sales of Barbie continue to fall with the financial downturn and Mattel International is counting on China to pick up the slack. With the spa and martini bar, the House of Barbie also hopes to stir up interest amongst older women in China who otherwise wouldn’t be targeted in western markets. Major designers such as Vera Wang, Patricia Field of “Sex and the City” fame, and handbag maker Judith Lieber all contributed to the merchandise including a US$15,000 Barbie wedding dress. Barbie, known as “Ba Bi Wa Wa” in Mandarin, still faces plenty of hurdles without the pedigree heritage she enjoys in western countries. Despite initial enthusiasm for the business model, Mattel was forced to downgrade sales expectations by 30% within the first six months of opening the House of Barbie. The interest is there, but whether or not Barbie can have her way with China and engender a new generation of Barbie princesses is yet to be scene. Check out more coverage by the Wall Street Journal and BBC as well as a CNN report detailing a blow-by-blow account of trying to spend twelve hours straight in the House of Barbie.

I got prime access to a Lenovo manufacturing factory for a Washington Post article on China’s efforts to create name-brand innovation and recognition globally. Although not as big as other assembly centers in Shanghai and Shenzhen, it still pumped out thousands of desktop computers on a daily basis.

Cars are quickly becoming the most hypersexualized and sought after commodity in China. Purchases already surged 45% last year, surpassing the US with 13.6 million vehicles sold, and show no sign of stopping. The greatest manifestation of this phenomenon is now the Beijing International Automotive Fair held every year on the outskirts of the city. With scantily clad models striking poses in every booth, over 40 luxury cars were sold in the first few days alone including a Bugatti Veyron sporting a 5.5 million USD price tag. Every car manufacture in the world comes to pay homage to the fastest growing car market on the planet.

This past weekend I embarked on a very intense assignments. Working with the potentially bereaved wife of a Shanxi coal miner, Shi Weike, only a week after a major mining incident was delicate work to say the least. Shi Weike moved between different jobs in rural Shanxi before taking up the dangerous but relatively lucrative position as an electrician in the Wangjialing coal mine. Coal is big business in the mineral rich but relatively poor province and provided Shi Weike with steady income to support his wife, Guo Qinqin, and daughter, Shi Rongrong. However, on the morning of March 28, the main shaft of the Wangjialing coal mine flooded when workers accidentally broke into an abandoned shaft filled with water. Although over a hundred miners were miraculously rescued over a week after the flooding, the fate of Shi Weike looked dark as the government still refused to list the names of the survivors and deceased. His uncle, Yang Shirong, faced the task of consoling Guo Qinqin who after two-weeks of waiting is began to lose hope for her husbands’s survival. Every day she stayed in bed and took an intravenous glucose drip due to her inability to eat. Shi Rongrong, her six-year-old daughter, was also not informed of the possible loss of her father. Like many other coal mining families Quo Qinqin will now have to seek compensation from the government in order to support her family. Coal miners die on an average of seven per day in Shanxi as safety regulations continue to be overlooked across the province. Taking the photos of Guo Qinqin on her mourning bed was one of the toughest things I have had to capture in my life. You can see the article and slideshow online at the Wall Street Journal website.

The annual wedding expo went down this past weekend at the Beijing Exhibition Centre much to the delight of hopeful young couples all over Beijing. Booths offering complete wedding packages were packed with small tables and agents showing off their look books and other materials guaranteed to fulfill matrimonial fantasies. In other sections of the expo, young potential brides tried on a wedding gowns of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Quite frankly, the bustle and intensity of the engaged couples was overwhelming – everything was imbued with desire and hope. Right now, western-style weddings are all the hype in China, and people are willing to go to great lengths to guarantee their own vision of modern and cultured wedding ceremony.

This past week I finally got to visit the developmental monstrosity that is Dubai. Nothing can really describe the audaciousness and scope of the luxury metropolis they hope to raise from the sands of the surrounding desert. Ranging from the largest mall in the world to the tallest building in the world, Dubai is building a new Babel that is already on the verge of going completely bust. For the foreseeable future however, despite the world economic downtown, the cranes are still moving as one of the largest construction sites in the world continues to lurch forward.

The first major leg of my Kunming to Tashkent journey came to a close yesterday after safely arriving in Lhasa. For eight days I rode along the haphazard roads of eastern Tibet, crossing passes reaching over 17,000 feet and dropping into subtropical gorges with glaciated massifs rising over verdant slopes. The area, traditionally known as Kham, spouts some of the most pivotal rivers in Asia – the Mekong, Yangzi, and Salween all find their headwaters amidst this geologically variegated landscape. Stunning vistas aside, Kham also represents one of the last frontiers in Tibet that the Chinese state has keenly targeted for development as described in its Tibet’s March Toward Modernization report commemorating the “50th anniversary of the peaceful liberation of Tibet” in 2001.

The preamble from Tibet’s March Toward Modernization:

Modernization has been an important issue confronting countries and regions worldwide in modern times. Since the invasion of the Western powers in the mid-19th century, it has been the most important task of the people of all ethnic groups in China, the Tibetan people included, to get rid of poverty and backwardness, shake off the lot of being trampled upon, and build up an independent, united, strong, democratic and civilized modern country. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and especially since the introduction of reform and opening to the outside world, the modernization drive in China has been burgeoning with each passing day, and achieved successes attracting worldwide attention. China is taking vigorous steps to open even wider and become more prosperous. China’s Tibet, with its peaceful liberation in 1951 as the starting point, has carried out regional ethnic autonomy and made a historical leap in its social system following the Democratic Reform in 1959 and the elimination of the feudal serf system. Through carrying out socialist construction and the reform and opening-up, Tibet has made rapid progress in its modernization drive and got onto the track of development in step with the other parts of the country, revealing a bright future for its development.

This year is the 50th anniversary of the peaceful liberation of Tibet. Looking back on the course of modernization since its peaceful liberation, publicizing the achievements in modernization made by the people of all ethnic groups in Tibet through their hard work and with the support of the Central Government and the whole nation, and revealing the law of development of Tibet’s modernization – these will contribute not only to accelerating the healthy development of Tibet’s modernization but also to clearing up various misunderstandings on the “Tibet issue” in the international community and promoting overall understanding of the past and present situations in Tibet.

While the Chinese state’s continual insistence on referring to their militant subjugation of Tibet as a “peaceful liberation” remains dubious at best, their reference to a “law of development” guiding Tibet’s modernization now appears just as disconcerting. Imposing a socioeconomic developmental aim and spinning it as theoretically indubitable is overbearing in the extreme, especially as it begins to lock Kham into a consumer cycle of wage earning and spending. Activists might continue to push the Chinese state for a truly autonomous Tibet, but the real transformation is well underway as commercial goods slip in with the paved roads slowly branching between Lhasa, Kunming, and Chengdu.

These stable trucking routes established commodity markets replete with utilitarian products such as plastic washbasins, kitchen utensils, tools, and the now requisite electric blender used for churning various yak products. Thoroughfares in major Kham towns were lined with shops purveying such goods – provincial youths would walk amongst them in awe while local residents blithely smoked cigarettes and busied themselves with cell phones. Even though many of these implements represented a substantial benefit for many rural families, they also cloaked the arrival of less vital commodities slowly working their way onto store shelves. Traditional wool-lined overcoats now gathered dust behind overpriced t-shirts showcasing Western name brands.

As the trip continued toward Lhasa it became clear that this “law of development” aimed to prop up commercial markets reliant on more centralized economic systems that, in turn, were dependent on subsidies provided by the Chinese state. The towns I passed in the most advanced stages of development, such as Pomi and Bayi, were flooded with supermarkets, designer clothing stores, beauty parlors, and upscale restaurants. These products and services engender a consumer-oriented dependency that the Chinese state finds easy to manipulate or threaten to withdraw. In the end, I cannot help but see the Chinese state’s “law of development” as an important tool for incorporating Kham into its own particular standard and vision of socioeconomic development that essentially undermines any semblance of ethnic autonomy within the region.

While this growth certainly benefits impoverished areas at first, its adverse effects become even more drastic as the commercial boom continues to attract and largely benefit immigrating Han Chinese who have the requisite business skills to take advantage of free market reforms. Their presence is growing by the year and already dominates major urban centers such as Lhasa and Shigatse. Many Tibetans already feel left behind despite promises of a “bright future” by the Chinese state. Continued grumbling about the lack of autonomy and political reform in Lhasa now seems irrelevant as the Chinese state’s “law of development” draws rural Tibet into homogenizing consumer trends already sweeping across mainland China.