I see I haven’t been doing much of the “Exploring the world through sight…” part of our title. So here is some very interesting slice-of-life photography of daily situations in various parts of China complete with captions.

I don’t know about you, but I often get the feeling that we humans experience the world too much through simple recognition and not enough through conscious reflection. Which is to say that every time we see or hear about something that is far enough removed from our daily experience, for example foreign countries or cultures that happen to be thousands of miles away, the information gets cross-referenced against a subconscious database of shallow tidbits –possibly simply a few cliché mental images– which is just enough to provide a basic frame of reference that is suitable for understanding the conversation and moving on.

The problem seems to me to be that without some kind of external impetus or revelation many of us may always see these people and their situations as hazy unrealistic caricatures of reality; and remain unable to sympathize with them or identify with their hardships. When we hear about Asia’s struggle for energy and industrial growth we may simply think of the whole continent as an Asia-shaped piece in an economics board game and forget the human element entirely.

In other words, I think images like these can help inspire us to reflect upon what it means that there are real people out there living these lives today.

The world is an interesting and dynamic place. It’s just hard sometimes to see it past the daily grind, to mentally disembark from our domestic slumber.

[Part 1: Survival][Part 2: Relationships][Part 3: Desires]