Day Three

Image 3

Brick Factory, Hebei Province. photograph by Yongping Chen, My Shot. Source.

This photograph shows a young woman pulling a brick cart in Hebei Province outside Beijing. In this area, farmland has been replaced by enormous industrial projects, such as this brick factory. As Beijing and other megacities in China and across the globe continue to grow, local commerce transitions from agriculture to industries that provide construction materials.[1] As seen here, women are forced to leave their homes to work alongside men in hard labor occupations in order to earn enough money to provide for their families. Where family farms once provided sustenance for their occupants and a livable income for those necessities not provided by the land, a factory job pays very little for very hard work—this woman appears to be carrying around 95 bricks in her card, a weight of over 570 pounds.[2] This image will be projected on the third day as a commentary on the changing countryside outside Shanghai. Viewers of this projection should see in this image a reflection of the changing gender roles in their country, as their rural land shifts to non-urban industrial areas.

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[1] Louisa Lim, “Arrival of Industry Brings Suffering to Countryside,” May 19, 2006, National Public Radio, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5416431 (accessed March 25, 2011).

[2] Your Image Here’s own calculation.