Asia’s Wildlife Trade: High demand for traditional medicines, exotic pets, and culinary delicacies drives a multibillion-dollar commerce—legal and illegal—that is emptying forests, fields, and seas. Across the region, we see the scale of the trade: traditions of consumption deeply ingrained in the culture, criminal activities that flourish in spite of the law, efforts at conservation and enforcement trying to gain footing, and the cold business of harvesting wild animals.The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation runs rehabilitation facilities for orangutans that have been confiscated from circuses, private pet owners, etc in hopes of returning the primates to the wild. Among activities are the recording of fingerprints for a computer database using Interpol technology, and "forest school," where human technicians bring infant orphan orangutans out in the trees where they can become accustomed to basic skills like swinging from branches and eating leaves.
Ningxia, 2007. Workers salvage bricks near a coal burning government-run electrical plant.
Asia’s Wildlife Trade: High demand for traditional medicines, exotic pets, and culinary delicacies drives a multibillion-dollar commerce—legal and illegal—that is emptying forests, fields, and seas. Across the region, we see the scale of the trade: traditions of consumption deeply ingrained in the culture, criminal activities that flourish in spite of the law, efforts at conservation and enforcement trying to gain footing, and the cold business of harvesting wild animals.At a reptile skinning operation, workers daily take hundreds of blood pythons and salvator monitors brought to them by local collectors, kill them with a blow to the head, fill the carcasses with water and air, skin them and dry the skins for sale to the leather goods industry.
At the morning fish market on the east side of Lombok Island, the most profitable item is shark fin. Boats carrying sharks unload in the morning and porters carry them on poles to the selling area. At 8 am the sharks are auctioned off and immediately butchered. The purchaser will sometimes immediately sell the fresh shark meat and fins to separate buyers. Sometime the purchaser will keep the fins to dry and then sell. The meat stays in Indonesia but the fins and tails go to fin clearing houses in Surabaya, where dealers from China, HK and Taiwan buy in bulk. Here an average shark sells for around $100. About 2/3 of that value is for the fins.
Wong Tai Sin Temple, a Taoist place of worship known for fortune telling, is popular among Chinese tourists, who make up about 70% of the visitors. On the day before the Cathay Pacific Hong Kong International Races at Shatin horse track, the temple also draws in many gamblers looking for picks.
Thinknao at Sanlitun Apple Store, Beijing
Christian Revival service for NSCN-IM soldiersJhum slash-and-burn agriculture, clearing away forest growth
WHO mHealth D-Tree eNUT program to prevent early childhood malnutritionNorth A district, Unguja, Zanzibar
Chaani Kubwa Primary Health Care UnitMothers bring their children in for examination, where they are weighed and measured against standards, the data is collected via smartphone into the eNUT system, and recommendations are made by the health workers.This is the full process as described by Julia Ruben of D-Tree:The children are screened (weight, MUAC etc.) and registered if they are severely malnourished. They are given physical exam and appetite test. If there are major issues in either they are referred to higher level care (in-patient intervention). If not they are counseled and treated (plumpy’nut, vitamin a, etc.); they come back weekly or biweekly for examination and treatment. When they reach their target weight they are discharged as cured. At any time if complications arise they will be referred to inpatient; if they take a really long time to reach their target weight or they lose weight they will also be referred. If they stop showing up for appointments they are discharged (but not as cured -as a defaulter). If they are referred and discharged from inpatient they should come back to out patient and be re-enrolled.Health care workers are the woman in all white and the woman with a bright orange and green shawl.
Wuwucun migrant village, mostly from SIchuan
WHO mHealth Changamka Microhealth maternal health voucher payment program.Changamka is running a research project on providing rural women with e-vouchers for professional maternal and infant healthcare as well as transport to health facilities, with the plan of expanding to a full micro health insurance system that will lower Kenya's high rates of maternal and infant deaths during pregnancy and childbirth.Mbale Rural Training Health CentreMothers and newborn babies in the post natal ward.
A former factory accountant from northeast China, J's current workspace is a legal one-woman/one-room brothel on Hong Kong Island. Over the last few years she has saved enough to buy two apartments back on the mainland, and she is now planning to buy another property in Hong Kong.
East 4th Ring Road
In Nagaland, trucks that would be decorated with images of Shiva and Lakshmi in the flatlands and mainland have been painted with pictures of Jesus and other Christian imagery by their Naga owners (although the drivers may be Hindu or Muslim)
At a party for Chanel’s new line of watches, a prospective buyer, his face lit by a camera sensor, tests the feel of a $6,000 timepiece. In Hong Kong, where expensive tastes and luxury goods continue to fire the economy, today’s biggest spenders now come from the mainland, putting locals in the uncomfortable position of being dependent on the visitors who not long ago they considered unsophisticated bumpkins.
On the wave-sprayed rocks beside Aberdeen Harbour, fishermen and other ocean-faring folk have placed figurines of Guan Yin (Kwun Yam), the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, for her protection at sea. Such everyday expressions of traditional Chinese belief in the metaphysical are far more common in Hong Kong than in actual Chinese cities, which wiped out many "superstitious" folk customs during the Cultural Revolution.
View of Hong Kong from Lion Rock, which overlooks Kowloon from the north. Almost half of Hong Kong's population lives in public or government subsidized housing. Lit up at night, the glowing public estate blocks are hard to distinguish from the high end luxury towers.
To commemorate the Tiananmen Square demonstrations twenty-two years previous that ended in a bloody crackdown on June 4, 1989, a young artist has invited passers-by to cover him with sticky notes of protest. Mostly directed at the Chinese government and their handpicked Hong Kong leadership, they include messages such as: Free China. End Totalitarianism. Release Activists. Don't Be a Slave - Remember June 4. China's tolerance is wearing thin, but the One Country/Two Systems policy still allows expressive freedom in Hong Kong. If this was in China, the artist would already be in prison.
More than half of Ulaanbaatar's 1.2 million people live in the ger districts that have formed as ex-herders have given up the nomadic life en masse to pitch their gers on the hills surrounding the city. These districts are little better than shantytowns, lacking running water or proper roads.
The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Company, headquartered in a Norman Foster-designed post-modern cathedral to capital built in 1986, is arguably the most powerful non-government institution in the city. Hong Kong's traditionally dominant financial infrastructure continues to thrive as the balance of wealth and deals increasingly comes from Chinese interests.
The Mongkok district in Kowloon is one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the world, known for underworld-controlled nightlife.
For the first birthday of shopkeeper Khamhi Shingwang's first son (after 4 daughters) Samuel, the family is throwing a big party, buying two pigs and two mithuns (the best most expensive kind of cattle) to feed the entire village. Before the slaughter, a Baptist prayer service is held and after the mithuns are killed, a village elder says a traditional pre-Christian blessing asking for the continued presence of mittens in the family (i.e. prosperity).Headhunter - face tattoos show his first successful raid, body tattoos his first head taken in battle, the Jesus clock shows his and his family's conversion to Christianity shortly after his last raid. Headhunter - face tattoos show his first successful raid, body tattoos his first head taken in battle, the Jesus clock shows his and his family's conversion to Christianity shortly after his last raid.
It takes gunsmith Wangchet Konyak about one week to make a musket. He can make many kinds of guns, even AK47s, if he has the right parts.It takes gunsmith Wangchet Konyak about one week to make a musket. He can make many kinds of guns, even AK47s, if he has the right parts.
Shenzhen, 2010. A one room home in one of Shenzhen's many urban villages, where migrants gather and, instead of returning to the countryside, seek to settle.
