Hong River Slum Town, Hanoi, Vietnam

Bennett Cain July 5, 2016

I haven’t done the best job of updating my site while I’ve been away. Balancing transit, planning, shooting, taking it all in, etc. It's been hard to make the time needed to put together the right treatment for these images. The big pieces are coming together slowly but in the meantime, I’ve managed to do some smaller projects for Instagram. A handful of captioned images that when read in sequence are little “Instastories”. Perhaps they should live here as well.

Mr. Thanh was a bit of a nut but probably the best fixer I’ve had yet. Here he is in his hometown of Hanoi, Vietnam showing the lake Senator John McCain supposedly parachuted into after his plane was shot down in ‘67. I told him I wanted to see how the people of Hanoi live so he took me down to the banks of the Hong (Red) River.

Along the banks of the Red River 160,000 people live in mostly illegal or semi-permanent dwellings or boats but also farm in the area and operate small stores and even factories. It's urban, rural, and industrial all in one place. I've never seen anything quite like it.

Dirt roads, irrigations canals, and farmed plots give the area a weirdly rural atmosphere in the midst of a city of 7+ million.

Polluted irrigation canal.

In the night market serving the Red River slumtown, many people sleep in their shops during the day. It was about 9am when we showed up and Thanh saw some guys he knew drinking and playing cards after working all night.

Nice enough guys but they wouldn’t have thought twice about rolling me had I not been with someone they knew. This is why you work with a qualified guide when shooting in places like this. The difference is between being tolerated and possibly welcomed or getting robbed and having your ass kicked.

"Who the hell is this and why is he here?”

The local meat market. They have slightly different standards of hygiene in Asia. I wouldn't have thought it but it's turned me into a vegetarian. After getting violently ill twice in China from bad meat and seeing a few things of which I'll save the description for a later date, I've found myself unable to consume anything that screams.

The Vietnamese government is beginning to integrate parts of these slums into the city of Hanoi but it will take a long time to clean up such extreme pollution. If ever.

Hanoi is a hard city. Very poor, crowded, and polluted but the people are some of the nicest and friendliest you’ll ever meet. And this despite a decade of chemical warfare waged against them by the US, the effects of which people who haven’t been born yet will pay the price for. You would think they wouldn’t even issue us a visa but instead they welcome us with great warmth. I found their forgive and forget attitude incredibly humbling.

Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yunnan Province, China

Bennett Cain July 5, 2016

Yunnan Province is a remarkable place. Sandwiched between Vietnam, Laos, and Burma; in many ways it has more in common with its Southeast Asian neighbors than the rest of China. You find incredible diversity everywhere here with the variety of people, language, food, landscape, climate, flora and fauna. While many in the west associate China with crowds and massive, polluted cities it's also a country of staggering natural beauty and unique geology. Tiger Leaping Gorge is a massively deep river canyon in a remote part of western Yunnan near the Tibetan border. In contrast with many other places in China, here the air is clean, crisp, and invigorating. After spending two weeks in Beijing when there was record high pollution, I have a new found appreciation for air quality. Additionally at this high altitude, the quality of light and cloud is almost painterly. Yunnan is the only Chinese province where ethnic minorities outnumber Han people. In and around Tiger Leaping Gorge has been inhabited since antiquity by Naxi, Bai, and Tibetan people which adds another fascinating layer to the region.

The main trail trough the gorge is an 18 mile two day trek climbing over 9,000 feet.

Local Naxi guides are the safest way through the trail. Though it's relatively rare, there have been numerous incidents of trekkers being robbed while in the gorge.

Many thousands of feet below is the river that over eons cut its path deep through these mountains.

Where the path summits there are hundreds of beautiful, wind-worn Tibetan prayer flags. Most of the people in this region are Buddhist and there are many incredible temples throughout.

A virtually inaccessible Naxi village along the trail.

Outside the villages there is some evidence of environmental abuse. Here, there's some kind of mining happening upstream that's depositing salt ad sand all over this ravine. China has a ways to go with the whole "stewardship" concept. As does the United States for that matter. I'm cautiously optimistic progress is being made in both countries. At least there's increased awareness.

One of the eeriest things I noticed in the two days I was here is that you don't see (or hear) any wild animals. There are tons of domesticated animals but you don't even hear birds in the gorge. It's strange and deeply unsettling to be in such a massive natural area and find it to be devoid of its wildlife. In hindsight, I noticed this in other places deep in the Chinese countryside as well. Places that should be crawling with natural life and instead all you find are humans, pigs, and chickens. The ecological problems this country is facing are monumental. They have essentially traded their natural environment for fast tracked economic development. The repercussions of this have yet to be fully felt in their country or by the rest of the world but it's coming.

Not too far from the gorge is Shibao Mountain featuring many ancient Buddhist temples like Baoxiang, some of which are carved directly out of the rock face.

1200 years ago the Goddess, Guanyin, was carved directly out of the side of the cliff. The hole in her chest is she reached in and pulled out her own heart to show her devotion to the Buddha.

This region is also home to one the most entertaining and bravely curious creatures, wild macaques. Though no longer truly wild as they've learned that hanging out at temples is basically an all you can eat buffet so now have little incentive to go back deep into the forest.

Chinese Megascale

Bennett Cain July 5, 2016

The Chinese have always had a knack for projects that should be impossible. Like building a 5,500 mile long brick wall. In the 15th century no less! Or displacing millions of people to dam one of the world's most treacherous rivers creating enough energy every day to power two New York City's. It seems no matter how preposterous the idea and however high the human and environmental cost may be, things happen in this country on an absolutely massive scale.

I saw the Three Gorges Dam in Hubei Province first and then a few weeks later saw the Great Wall at Mutianyu. I connected the two immediately. These are human endeavors the scale of which you really can't get your head around. Even seeing in person, they leave you somewhat in disbelief. What both have in common is an absolutely enormous human cost. In China the Confucian value of society before the individual is deeply ingrained and national development and progress will cost what they cost. The evidence of this is virtually everywhere here in 2014 with four megacities whose populations grew to over 20 million in the past thirty years, 160 more with populations over 1 million, air you can barely breathe in some places, water you can't drink without boiling, and innumerable scarred landscapes. I find it all to be equally inspiring and terrifying.

View of the locks at the Three Gorges Dam. From this altitude you really feel the industrial haze that hangs over much of central and northern China. You also get a sense of how vast areas of the natural landscape here have been radically altered by this project.

Pixel level of the previous shot. For scale, in the center you can see three men standing where the Yangtze river meets the lock.