Tag: Ronghui Chen

“We’re used to thinking of Chinese cities in the context of growth,” explains photographer Ronghui Chen, “but the country’s northeast region is an exception. Bordering Russia and North Korea, the region, with ample natural resources, was the first to develop heavy industries in the 1960s and prospered for decades. There were 15 million immigrants to northeastern China in Mao’s era.

My project, Freezing Land, aims to explore descendants of immigrants living in the northeast. Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping started a campaign called the “Chinese Dream”. But what does this mean to the the once prosperous land? What’s the story of today’s northeastern China?