A Line Across China was the result of a nine year long journalistic and photographic project trying to understand and describe, on a personal level, China’s extremely rapid development, geographical differences and migration; the largest in the history of humankind. The project was based on two bicycle trips along the same route across China from Tibet to Hong Kong with seven years between them. On the second trip, in 2006, Marcus Haraldsson revisited the same people, villages and cities as in 1999. Characters included ferryman Weima in Tibet and young girl Fu Hong in meager Guizhou province. In 1999 Weima´s access to mass communication was a fire beacon and Fu Hong lived in a mud house among rice paddies; in 2006 Weima had a 3G mobile phone and Fu Hong had become a factory worker in the coastal mega city of Canton. Personal stories like these were told in a book, a photographic and multimedia exhibition, and through a great number of articles, TV and radio interviews in both Sweden and China. The book, En linje över Kina, won the Dalsland Literary Prize.
A Line Across China, 1999- 2008
A Line Across China was the result of a nine year long journalistic and photographic project trying to understand and describe, on a personal level, China’s extremely rapid development, geographical differences and migration; the largest in the history of humankind. The project was based on two bicycle trips along the same route across China from Tibet to Hong Kong with seven years between them. On the second trip, in 2006, Marcus Haraldsson revisited the same people, villages and cities as in 1999. Characters included ferryman Weima in Tibet and young girl Fu Hong in meager Guizhou province. In 1999 Weima´s access to mass communication was a fire beacon and Fu Hong lived in a mud house among rice paddies; in 2006 Weima had a 3G mobile phone and Fu Hong had become a factory worker in the coastal mega city of Canton. Personal stories like these were told in a book, a photographic and multimedia exhibition, and through a great number of articles, TV and radio interviews in both Sweden and China. The book, En linje över Kina, won the Dalsland Literary Prize.