Surround the city: The long journey of Chinese farmers to the city

Author: Zhang Xinmin
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Features: In the early 20th century, the famous American photographer Lewis Hine's masterpiece "Ten Cents a Bed" depicted grim scenes. In the photographs of the Chinese photographer Zhang Xinmin, we discover an even more exaggerated version. In Zhang Xinmin's photographs, we are even more sorrowfully struck by the sight of a small space filled with 20 people. Several families share a single bed. It is this reality that torments photographers like Zhang Xinmin, leading them to document the entire process of China's urbanization through their images. Throughout the 1990s, with his unique sensitivity and perseverance, he revealed the lives of "the other half of the people" in China's urbanization process. This book vividly recreates the authentic experiences of farmers migrating to cities in the 1990s, presenting a systematic and long-term visual record of this social transformation. It focuses on farmers, the journey of farmers moving to cities, the impact of migrating farmers on urban areas, and the changes in the living conditions of farmers during China's urbanization process. Millions of people, driven by survival and the search for opportunities, left their hometowns, enduring hardships year after year. Compared to the abstract descriptions in text, the unique value of visual records makes them even more precious. During the 1990s, the photographer spent a full decade documenting this vast and mobile population. Their joys and sorrows, their struggles and unions, their voices, their aspirations, their demands, and their circumstances are all captured in the images of this book.