Freeze-Framed Girl Power

I was deeply moved by a photo shoot and interview I did with a female member of China’s SWAT team back in 2015. The experience inspired me to launch a special photography project on females. Over the subsequent five years, I captured images of Chinese women of all ages to share their girl power with a wider audience.

Chen Shaoqin: 72-year-old Volunteer Guide for Contemporary Art

“We can’t control the length of life, but we can expand its dimensions.”

Chen Shaoqin set an example for those in their 70s to live their lives to the fullest.

In 1950, Chen was born into an ordinary family in Xiamen City, southeastern China’s Fujian Province. She only started to learn English at age 40, but still managed to pass examinations to receive higher education and become a white-collar worker at a foreign trade company.

In her 60s, Chen first got involved in contemporary art.

After retirement, Chen went to live with her son in Beijing. After accompanying her granddaughter to the famous 798 Art District to watch cultural and art exhibitions so many times, she also became a contemporary art enthusiast. She actively lingered around various cultural activities such as exhibitions and lectures, carefully taking notes to absorb artistic nutrients as much as possible.

In 2016, Chen was invited by the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art to become a volunteer tour guide, the oldest on staff.

When introducing artworks on display to visitors, she deploys her extensive knowledge of history, aesthetics, sociology, and psychology, not only covering the artists’ creation and life stories, but also her interpretation and understanding of their works.

Every interpretation is so passionate and professional that visitors are regularly touched. Her stories have even been recorded in short videos and gone viral on the social media platform WeChat Moments. Now, she is an online celebrity, dubbed “Passionate Grandma Interpreter.”

Chen considers these days the best of her life. After retirement, she was able to continue contributing to society as an art museum tour guide, which brought her a great sense of fulfillment and happiness.  

 

Gao Ning: 52-year-old Executive Sous Chef at a High-end Hotel

“People who love food also love life.”

Gao Ning is an executive sous chef at a star-rated hotel in Beijing’s Central Business District (CBD). After 32 years in the kitchen, she has come to the conclusion that people who love food also love life.

Chinese people frequently express love through giving lovely things. In Gao’s opinion, these things should include the “tasty.” In her memory, grandma’s love was delivered through fried eggs with the aroma of sycamore flowers and stewed meatballs in cabbage soup. As a child, Gao fell in love with flowers, food, and cooking. Chefs are still mostly men, but Gao has performed so well in the culinary world that she was dubbed the “chef goddess” in the CBD. Employed in a Western restaurant, Gao transformed the Chinese street food “jianbing” (a kind of thin pancake made of millet flour, etc.) into a high-end delicacy and serves many other Chinese snacks in new ways, making her a favorite among foodies.

Although she was promoted to management at age 22, Gao has never left the kitchen. “I want to keep honing my cooking skills, and I want my customers to eat happily and healthily,” she said.

Xiao Ying: 46-year-old Mail Sorter

“When the parcels on the conveyor belt are all processed and the new batch hasn’t yet reached the chute, I get a break.”

The fast development of the online retail industry has made work for China Post’s mail sorters increasingly busy. Workers scan a code on every parcel and sort them into different carts. The work seems endless as new parcels continue dropping onto the conveyor belt.

Xiao Ying has worked as a mail sorter for 27 years. She personally witnessed the explosive growth of express delivery volume from the mail sorting frontlines. “Especially during the Double 11 online shopping festival, everyone starts buying more and more stuff, and all kinds of parcels swarm from different countries and regions,” she said.

Parcel sorting work normally starts at 8 a.m. and lasts until 8 p.m. During special periods like the Double 11, most employees work overtime. “Other than my lunch break, my only chance to catch a breath is between the parcels loading and unloading,” Xiao said. “When the parcels on the conveyor belt are all processed and the new batch hasn’t yet reached the chute, I get a break.”

Recent cooperation between manual work and automatic equipment has continuously improved the efficiency of express processing and delivery.
Someone else offers the final drop-off service, but behind every parcel delivered is the hard work of people like Xiao.

Bona: 32-year-old Train Attendant

“The train is like my second home. Just boarding it, I feel like home.”

Bona, a girl from the Mongolian ethnic group born in 1989, works as an attendant on the D6757 bullet train between the Baotou and Jining stations. For more than 10 years, she has worked various stretches between Hohhot and Beijing, Hohhot and Qingdao, and Hohhot and Baotou. Her work enabled her to witness the rapid development of rail travel in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region as a part of it. Rail transport in the autonomous region quickly evolved from the old-style slow trains to faster direct expresses and then to high-speed bullet trains.  

She first started working on a slow train. “It was always crowded on the train, especially during the Spring Festival travel rush,” she recalled. “So much work had to be done every day including cleaning the carriages, fueling the boiler, and organizing the luggage that we were always too exhausted to chat at the end of the day. The long journeys on slow trains were big challenges for staff.”

In January 2015, the first high-speed Electric Multiple Unit (EMU) train between Jining and Baotou began operation. Bona was chosen as one of the first attendants on the high-speed EMU train due to her proficient knowledge and rich experience in passenger service.

Passenger service work may not require high skills, but it tests the train attendants’ capacity of handling emergencies. “Various things can happen at any time on a train including sudden illnesses, unexpected separation of people, loss of items, or other situations,” she said. “It is our responsibility to ensure passengers arrive at their destinations safely, conveniently, and comfortably.”

 

Liu Junli: 24-year-old Delivery Rider

“The harder I work, the more money I make. So, I believe life will get better gradually.”

Delivery rider is a profession so male-dominated that practitioners are usually referred to as “delivery boys” in China, but a few women have also taken the job, even if statistics show they account for less than three percent of the total.

“Post-95s” girl Liu Junli is one of them. In 2020, Liu arrived in Beijing and became a food delivery rider. Born in 1997, she has such a positive and optimistic character that few could guess how much pressure rests on the pleasant girl’s shoulders. The cost of surgery to save her father overwhelmed the family. “I’m his daughter, and I had to do something,” she said.

Food delivery is a job where every second counts. On a typical day, she rides more than 150 kilometers, walks more than 30,000 steps, delivers more than 50 orders, and works nearly 12 hours.

Tasked with feeding others on time, she never gets a chance to eat when everyone else does. She often doesn’t have time for lunch until two or three o’clock in the afternoon, and dinner is even later, after 8 p.m. Sometimes she has to grab a few quick bites while waiting at traffic lights. “Red lights are my only breaks,” she grinned.

Delivering food is hard work. Her team had a total of eight female riders when she first started, but now only two including Liu are left. Every day after completing the 12 hours of work, Liu studies English for an hour after returning to her dormitory. She expects to find more possibilities in Beijing, a city full of opportunities, through her hard work.