A documentary project by a participating creator
Chinese Farmers’ Testimonies
Hou Yimin · Photographs and recorded voices from rural China
Creator's project · Hou Yimin
See ten years of work first.
Then discuss a collaboration.
A ten-year record of rural China through photographs and voices: 145 complete works, 500 rolls of film and more than 300 hours of original interviews. This selection presents 28 representative photographs alongside the people's words and the context of long-term work.
A decade of witness
Background
From 1997 to 2007, Hou Yimin travelled through rural China at his own expense, documenting families, labour, land, education, illness and migration. Alongside photographs he kept over 300 hours of interviews. The project preserves people's lives, voices, accounts and circumstances as testimony, rather than treating them as an abstract subject.
The original exhibition contains 145 works across three viewing stages. Entry is free, with no account or payment required. You can pause at any photograph.
Awards & archive
Awards and collections
Farmers received the top Pingyao award at the 2005 Pingyao International Photography Festival. Afterwards the Pingyao International Photography Museum proposed an exhibition and collected 25 works. No precise collection date is claimed where the artist no longer recalls it.
Mother with Twins received a non-breaking-news photography award from People's Photography and was printed across a full page. The newspaper later launched a search for the mother, found her and organised a donation ceremony. Readers' donations were delivered through People's Daily and People's Photography.
Selected works · 28 / 145
Selected works
Arranged around family, education, land, labour, migration and health. Each photograph retains its title and recorded account.
Mother with Twins
The mother said that her husband had found construction work in Beijing but earned nothing for a year and instead owed his supervisor for food and lodging. He could not afford to call her. He was ill and wanted to return, but she could not send money. This photograph became a representative image of the project and received a People's Photography award.
An everyday scene
An everyday scene.
Wang Sha, fourteen: can I go to school next year?
In the account accompanying this photograph, Hou Yimin met a disabled woman with a bleeding nose and visited her home. Her daughter Wang Sha was fourteen. School fees were 700 yuan a year; the family's annual income was 1,000 yuan. The story appeared on the first cover of China Poverty Alleviation under the question of whether she could remain in school.
Wang Sha sleeps beside the pig pen
A pig pen, a small bed and a mosquito net: Wang Sha slept beside the pigs.
A farming family's accounts, 1999
The family's 1999 accounts list 354 yuan for fertiliser, diesel and pesticide after Spring Festival; 611 yuan for autumn planting; and 393 yuan in village charges. Wheat earned 750 yuan per mu, or 2,250 yuan for three mu.
An elderly farmer taking herbal medicine
The farmer described years of illness, treatment costing 2,000 yuan, debts and no money left for medicine, while the pain continued. A local unlicensed practitioner said there was no village clinic and the township clinic was twenty kilometres away. Heavy work continued despite poor nutrition.
How many taxes and charges must a farmer pay?
The recorded list includes agricultural and forestry taxes, fund charges, land occupation and contracting fees, militia training, roads, education, military labour, disaster relief, livestock, fruit, vegetables and tobacco taxes, collective funds, film fees, family planning, vaccinations, health checks, pig raising, school construction and compulsory periodical subscriptions.
A dead fish. A boy.
A dead fish and a boy.
Wang Sha's tears
The account records a visit to a disabled woman in Fushou village with a bleeding nose after an assault by local officials. Her home was about forty square metres, with a pig pen beside the bed of her fourteen-year-old daughter Wang Sha. Annual school fees were 700 yuan against a family income of 1,000 yuan. Hou gave them 100 yuan and hoped his work could help more children remain in school.
A meal brought to the fields
The meal was cabbage, pickles and sweet potatoes. The accompanying account states that per-person taxes and fees were 250 yuan in 1999 and farming households lost money. After Spring Festival, the villagers left 1,400 mu of farmland uncultivated.
A kind of education
The account describes children being made to kneel as punishment in some rural communities, and the repeated injury to their dignity from an early age.
A birthday on Christmas Day
On my birthday I had nothing but farm work. I knew I was one year older. That was all.
Harvesting rice
Harvesting rice.
Selling produce
Selling farm produce.
A travelling shop
A travelling village shop.
Rural mothers in poverty
The accompanying text describes mothers living with inadequate food, education and healthcare, many with poor health or unable to read. They endure illness, financial hardship and heavy work for their families. Selling vegetables.
Homework
Doing homework.
A girl's room
The photographer asks where the girl lives and what she was saying as he photographed her. He asks whether her sleeping place is a pig pen. She answers yes.
A village school
A village school in Gulin County, Sichuan, 2003.
Physical education
Village teacher Wang Qiming tells the photographer that he also farms corn and millet. He works the fields on Sundays; during the school week his family helps.
Carrying water
Carrying water in Kongshan village, Tongjiang County, Sichuan, 2003.
Seeking work in the city
The accompanying words describe young men leaving to make a living, while older people, those who are ill or disabled and others remain to deal with village and township officials.
Porters waiting for work
At Chongqing's docks, porters wait for loading work with carrying poles. Their account describes twenty people sharing a room, one yuan for three daily meals and earnings of ten to thirty yuan on days with work, with many days spent waiting.
A barefoot doctor
A rural practitioner in Gulin County, Sichuan, 2004. The accompanying account describes self-taught village doctors without systematic medical education or formal licences.
A herbal medicine stall
The account says villagers bought herbs costing about fifteen US cents a packet. A local practitioner described conventional medicine as too expensive for many residents.
Acupuncture
The photograph records acupuncture. The local practitioner described public-hospital costs as unaffordable to many patients and said he tried to provide basic treatment and vaccinations.
Cupping
The accompanying account describes a traditional cupping treatment, priced at about thirteen US cents per cup. This is a record of the practice, not medical advice.
Corn grown from supposedly good seed
Asked whether poor yields still meant paying taxes, the farmer answered that officials had already called repeatedly. With too little grain for pigs, no pigs to sell and no money for rice, he asked what kind of life this was.
A fair starting point
Read freely; agree any collaboration directly
This site presents a representative selection. The full 145-work exhibition and Chinese audio guide remain in the original archive. Photographs are shown at their complete aspect ratio. Discuss rights, credit, privacy, term and fee directly with the creator before publishing, editing, translating, researching or licensing.