China: From paradise to business

According to a legend, a long time ago, two phoenixes flew over a small city in southern China and were so enchanted by the beauty of the place that they decided to stay there for a while. The name of this city is Fenghuang, or Phoenix City.

Many Chinese consider Fenghuang the most beautiful city in China. There lives the Miao ethnic group, with its rich and diverse culture. The city attracts millions of tourists, who dress like the Miao used to and admire its architecture and landscape. But the real Miao suffer from poverty and exploitation of tourism. They cannot afford the glamorous clothes of their ancestors and only admire the tourists who arrive in the city and rent expensive typical costumes, hire photographers and makeup artists to be photographed as the princesses of the glory days of the ethnicity, without knowing their culture or history. Many of the ethnicity manage to survive by selling handicrafts, begging or being subjected to low-paying jobs. Although the city preserves the culture of the Miao ethnic group, it does not give them the financial benefits brought by tourism. The contrast between the beauty of the city and the reality of the Miao made me do this series, when I visited the city in 2023.