This photograph is part of my documentary photography series Under the Well, created in 2018 in Laojing Village, a remote community in Shanxi Province, China. Once known as the filming location of a popular 1980s Chinese movie, Laojing remained untouched by the country’s rapid development. When I arrived, most households still lived without electricity or running water. Their daily struggles—quiet, continuous, and invisible—were unimaginable to someone like me, living in a modern, convenience-filled world.
This series documents the villagers’ everyday lives in 2018, focusing on a few characters: a crippled elderly man reading his beloved literature book, a blind man who, with no family or carer, learned to care for himself, and a group of workers laboring to dig gutters for the village.
On my first day there, I met the crippled elderly man sitting on a millstone, absorbed in his book. We started talking, and he told me about his life and the hardships of the village. At first shy, he later agreed to be photographed.
Without a medical facility nearby, he endured a two-hour truck ride to the nearest town for any treatment. His home was a shabby bungalow without electricity or running water. Every other day, he hauled heavy buckets from a communal tap to fill his water tank—an exhausting task made even harder by his disability.
In Chinese, Laojing means “old well.” But it’s not the villagers who are trapped at the bottom— it’s those of us blinded by mainstream narratives, ignorant of realities beyond our own. Under the Well is my attempt to listen, witness, and quietly share these overlooked lives, held between resilience and hardship.
