by photographer Han Lei
1998 FiftyCrows PhotoFund Winner

In 1992—which was the first time that I became interested in people and things associated with China’s railway system—I became concerned, little by little, with railway life. From that time, I began to take photogrpahs on the subject of China’s massive railway system. Traveling by train, I could only photograph a small part of this system. During my photographic research, I traveled through many provinces in China’s central and northwest  regions, the northern plain, and Guangzhou province in the south.

China’s railway system is like a long chain. It is the most important transportation system in the country, one which huge numbers of people depend upon for their survival. These people constitute an immense mobile population existing within the chain of the railway system. Many of these people travel from impoversished areas to economically developed areas looking for any kind of work. But many of them are not permitted to enter various cities. Consequently, these people find only menial and arduous labor, such as working in a freight transport station, a coal refining factory, or a cement factory. These railway support industries are located near the railroads. Even children drop out of school, taking a train somewhere to find a job, to work alongside adults. Destitute people, from the very poorest regions of China, live along the railroads with their entire families; they lead vagrant lives, surviving on leftover food that is tossed from passing trains. These desperately poor people build thatched shelters alongside the railways where they raise theiir children.

So many different people are lost along these railroads. Few people in China are even conscious of their existence, or know to where they disappear.

I am very interested in China’s railway system. I will spend one or more years conducting further photographic research on the railroads and their people.

In the near future, I plan on doing more photographic research on China’s extensive railway system in the regions of the northwest, north, and northeast as well as in another five provinces of China’s mid-south area. I also wil spend more time in central China in Guangzhuo province. I am very concerned with this hidden society of railway people which exists in Chinese society. These poor people, who are completely dependent on the railway system for survival, are living a vagrant lifestyle at the edge of chinese society.