Time travel by bicycle.

With a mountain bike to the Yao, Dong Qiang and the Italian photographer Alessandra Meniconzi visited Chinese minority peoples, to little-known sides of the country to discover. The results are everyday images that are anything but are commonplace.
  Only dimly in the mist the tops of the mountains of Guilin to recognize it has a backlight in the shadows just as recognizable man a long thin pipe and looks into the distance. The picture is mysterious and melancholy, as a result of a past century. It comes from a world that is threatened with extinction.

For the photo book "Hidden China" attended the Ticino travel photographer Alessandra Meniconzi Chinese minorities, which the Communist Party as "backward" respectively. So far they have largely managed to their centuries-old traditions, even if the government as "Zivilisierungsmaßnahme" in the neighborhood whole cities stamped out of the ground - as in the province of Xinjiang happened. This "hidden China" is not the progressive image of the billions of state, the KP-like superiors abroad to present it, but to a world in which ancient rituals and clothing styles to continue to exist today.
ON THE WUNSCHZETTELBertram Job: "Hidden China". Ullmann Publishing, 286 pages, 39,95 Euro Simple and convenient in-shop blogs bestellenOffiziell There are 55 minorities in China, as one of them about 91 million people. To tribes like the Yao, Hmong, Bouyei, Hani, Naxi, Qiang, Dong Khampa and to visit, today visited the 45-year-old Meniconzi mainly by mountain biking in remote areas of China - "a wonderful way, the landscapes and the locals know," as they appear on its Web site writes.
Their unusual movement and the modern high-tech bike should have helped her the interest of the villagers to secure. Thus the portraits very close and personal, with no or up to appear. The photographer shows the daily life of the people who work in the rice field with old-fashioned wooden plows, the artful embroidery and Webekünste, weddings and village festivals.
Folklorism through tourism
A large part of the band take images from Tibet and the Xinjiang province of a conflict-ridden regions, both of whose residents are particularly strong influence from Beijing to seek help. But there was no question Meniconzi, as a photo reporter denounce injustices and suffering. Instead, it shows people who succeed in their pride and to preserve their traditions.
ON TO ONLINE photo blogs haul: World of the ancient traditions of China: The dance of the Matriarchinnen (26.08.2008) The Forbidden City: The sky is built with (13.08.2008) Hainan island: Majorca of the East (27.05.2008) will be aggravated by them but the China's ever-increasing domestic tourism, although the money, but also the Folklorism the customs and costumes as well. The photographer reported that in their quest for genuine motives over the years in ever more remote areas had to travel. "If everything is being globalized, there is perhaps one day no longer stories," writes Meniconzi.
But it shows pictures that tell stories. Stories from China, where the shopping malls and skyscrapers of Beijing and Shanghai as well as the smoking factory vents of the Pearl River Delta centuries seem to be removed.