Disappearing cultures: 20 years of photography from China

21.07.2023 - 08:46 / roughguides.com / Greg Dickinson

One of the world’s leading photographers on disappearing cultural practices, Jo Farrell has spent the past ten years documenting the last known women in China with bound feet. Rough Guides travel editor Greg Dickinson caught up with Jo to discuss her archive of experiences travelling around China with a camera.

I went to Beijing in 1998 and absolutely loved it. I just couldn’t get enough. I would wake up at 4am or 5am to go out and photograph the elderly men going out in the mornings with their birdcages. I became slightly obsessed with photographing them.

Beijing bird walkers 1998 © Jo Farrell

One day I was photographing some beautiful doorways and realised a man was following me. He came up to me and said: “I speak a little English. I’m a lawyer and I live in this area. These hutongs [narrow alleyways from the Ming dynasty] are ready for demolition, so I’m glad you’re here recording these areas before they go.” If you go to Beijing now, many of the hutongs have vanished in place of new high rise buildings.

A hutong in Beijing in 1998 © Jo Farrell

I was travelling overland from Lhasa to Kathmandu in a 4X4 with four other people. They decided they wanted to go to Base Camp and talked to the driver about it, but they didn’t ask me. I didn’t have any clothes suitable for Everest’s cold conditions and had to buy a monk’s cassock to keep me warm. At Base Camp I spent the night in the monastery and realised there was no glass in the window. Outside it was snowing and there were yaks everywhere; I felt like i was hallucinating!

The most incredible people I met were the women with bound feet [a fashion trend that involved disfiguring a woman's feet into a point and was outlawed 103 years ago], who I’ve documented over the last ten years. The history of China in the last hundred years has been very harsh and quite dramatic with the cultural revolution, the formation of the Republic of China, then the People’s Republic of China and the Great Famine. And these women went through it all with their feet bound, something they thought would give them a better future and a better life. They have the most amazing tales of what life was like; it was an honour to be a voice for them.

Yange Jinge © Jo Farrell

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I’ve often found myself doing side projects covering various Chinese traditions. For example last time I was in Shandong I was staying with a lady whose son was the baker of the village. He made this bread they call mantou, a traditional kind of doughy steamed bread. When I first entered her son’s house I was amazed at what was happening. The room was neck-high with steam – you could see heads but no legs – and all the neighbours flocked in to buy their bread. I came back the next day and started