- Life in China
Wedding.
Brian Hennessy. Chongqing, China. 2008. Wedding. Chen Xiao Jin and Zhang Yue had invited me to their wedding ceremony in Chongqing. Xiao Jin, the bride, was a close friend who had waited three lonely years for her boyfriend to complete his engineering degree in France before they could be reunited. Now he has a job [...]
Choices
Brian Hennessy. Chongqing China. Chinese New Year, 2009. Choices. Chongqing weather: there is nothing good to say about it. The summer is more scorching and humid than the tropics, and winter is a cold wet blanket which coats the ridges in mist and fogs the river valleys below. A town without colour at this time [...]
Sichuan earthquake. Shifang. Remembering.
Brian Hennessy. Shifang, Sichuan, China. 5:12 (2009). Sichuan earthquake. Shifang. Remembering. Chinese people aren’t stupid. On the eve of 5:12, the anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake, I was in the provincial town of Shifang, very close to the epicenter at Beichuan. China Central Television (CCTV), a nationwide government-controlled service, was due to televise a special live [...]
Sichuan earthquake. Hongbaizhen. One year later.
Brian Hennessy. Hongbaizhen, Sichuan, China. One year later. HONGBAiZHEN; Graves of children. Photos by brian Hennessy. Sichuan earthquake. Hongbaizhen. One year later. I have just spent two days in the earthquake zone. I went there with a small group of volunteers from around China who dropped everything when the earthquake occurred, and went into the [...]
Sichuan earthquake. Beichuan. One year later.
Brian Hennessy. Beichuan, Sichuan, China. 5:12 (2009). Epicenter: the city of Beichuan. Before and after. Earthquake. Beichuan. One year later. These petty, useless words are not up to the job of describing the destruction the Sichuan earthquake wreaked on the picturesque valley-city of Beichuan and its citizens. This place of death and terrible beauty. An [...]
Sichuan earthquake: the aftermath.
Brian Hennessy. Chongqing, China. May 21, 2009 Sichuan earthquake: the aftermath. Nothing prepares you for the desolation of a city recovering from an earthquake. It's not the physical destruction that is so difficult to confront, although that is bad enough. Rather, it's the people. Traumatised people. I'm a psychologist who specialises in this area. I [...]
Campus window.
Brian Hennessy. Chongqing, China. 2005 Campus window. I kook out of my 15th floor window. Across the campus to the First Affiliated Peoples Hospital rising in the middle distance. Across the crowded student dormitories and old staff apartments, grey 1954 vintage reminders of an idealogical past long gone. Below, new China rising. Reaching for a [...]
Qiongren: the poor people.
Brian Hennessy. Chongqing, China. February 11, 2009 Photo by Brian Hennessy. Qiongren: the poor people. China's Qiongren: the aged, farmers, laid-off workers, the mentally-ill, migrant workers, peasants, and the uneducated. 800 million of them. Stoic and tough survivors of both communist and capitalist economic policies and promises; natural disasters (usually drought and flood, but last [...]
Returning migrant workers: injustice and resilience.
Brian Hennessy. Chongqing, China. March 9, 2008. Photo by Brian Hennessy. Returning migrant workers After the financial crisis. Before the stimulus programme. You can feel the suppressed emotion, despite their blank expressionless faces. It hangs over the entrance to the Chongqing railway station like a Yangtze River fog. A grey pall of despair. A cruel [...]
Eling park.
Brian Hennessy. Chongqing, China. 2004. Eling park (Gongyuan). Eling Park was created toward the end of the Qing Dynasty, before the overthrow of the last emperor, Pu Yi. During the anti-Japanese war the government of China relocated to Chongqing, and these grounds housed the embassies of Australia, Denmark, Turkey, the UK, and the USA. Deng [...]