The Wenzhou collection is part of an ongoing series I started taking in late 2005, over several weekend trips to rural villages in Zhejiang province. Wenzhou is considered an up and coming city where wealth and success are mostly due to its people renowned for their entrepreneurship and acute business sense. I tended to avoid the more chaotic Wenzhou center and instead ventured into the small villages around the city. I think I haven’t seen such a wide gap between rich and poor as I did in this area, where it is common to spot expensive european cars and witness villages where many dwellings are made out of corrugated sheet metal and people share quarters with farmyard animals. Human pollution is one of the worst too, a stark contrast compared to Hangzhou with its manicured parks and gardens, just a few hundred miles north.
