Li Mingfu did not expect watching an event in a town near his village could change his life so much.

A 52-year-old Hani ethnic minority farmer living in a small village of Jinghong County in Xishuangbanna Prefecture of Southwest China's Yunnan Province, Li has become a star photographer, with works published and exhibited nationwide.

From last Wednesday until Sunday, Li, along with other four ethnic minority farmer photographers from Yunnan, showcased his photos at Beijing's Capital Library in an exhibition entitled "Rice from a Farmer's Perspective."

Sponsored by Greenpeace, the exhibition, which demonstrated Chinese farmers' deep love of rice as well as their colorful life surrounding the rice fields, will tour Guangzhou and Hong Kong.

Amazing start

It all happened by chance.

One October day two years ago, Li went to the nearby town on an errand. "I found many people crowded on the street," Li recalled.

Curious, he joined the crowd. Some city people were distributing small cameras to the local onlookers and encouraging them to try taking photos.

"We distributed some cameras to create a more lively and interactive atmosphere," explained Wang Luxia, a representative from Greenpeace China, the sponsor of the exhibit, during the opening ceremony.

Wang and her colleagues were there promoting the value and importance of rice culture to indigenous residents in the Chinese countryside as part of a campaign called "The Road of Green Rice." "We did not have plans to find some photographers," said Wang.

Li got one of the cameras, took several photos in the town and then returned the camera and film to Wang and her colleagues.

The photos created by the local people and collected by Greenpeace China during their tour in Yunnan Province under the campaign in 2004 surprised Geng Yunsheng, a freelance photographer based in Kunming, the provincial capital.

"They were so vivid," said Geng.

He managed to find what he called five photographic "geniuses," including Li, and decided to launch a program to support them to record their life with cameras.

Thanks to his suggestions and lobbying, the Netherlands-based Greenpeace headquarters decided to support the program, providing each of the five grass-roots photographers with a 4,000-yuan middle-level automatic camera and 100 rolls of film.

With Geng as their coach, they used the cameras to create a record of their life as rice-farmers from last March to April this year.

The farmer-photographers spread out in remote villages in four different prefectures in this mountainous province.

As a dutiful coach, Geng spent one or two days once every two months, checking their progress and helping them with their problems and questions about photography.

It took about four to five weeks to finish one round, Geng told China Daily.

Each time, Geng brought back 20 rolls from each photographer and developed 20 photos. Next time, he would bring the 20 photos to them, sharing with them his ideas of why one photo was good, and another was not so good.

"I had very simple guidelines," Geng said.

After only a few rounds of visits, Geng said his five farmer students started to produce so many good photos that it was very difficult to decide which ones should be chosen for the exhibition.

Recording life

Meanwhile, Li said he was very excited about his new assignment, as he and his fellow farmers still considered photography as something they could not afford to do.

However, he found it quite natural to take up the camera and take photos to record the lives of his fellow farmers, Li said.

And he was also a conscientious pupil, often thinking of what Geng said, looking at his own previous photos and finding new angles or subjects to improve his skills.

The photo Li felt proudest of features women during their celebration of the International Woman's Day on March 8 last year.

"In our culture, women have to eat poorer food and work more. But on that day, all women from nearby villages gathered together, enjoying singing and dancing performances and tug-of-war contests," Li said.

"At this moment, they were so free, so joyful, as if they were the happiest persons in the world," he said.

For Bai Yunxian, a 21-year-old Dai woman in Xinping County, Yuxi Prefecture, taking the photographs helped her discover a great deal about the lives of local people.

Every day, whether she went to the field or wove clothes at home, Bai took her camera along. She took photos whenever she found something interesting.

Once, she heard songs from another hill and she set off at once, running to that hill, where she found a group of people planting rice seedlings.

Another time, Bai found her best friend on a date with her boyfriend. Following an ancient tradition, they were feeding a piece of cake to each other, showing their mutual love and commitment to future marriage.

Bai silently approached them, crawled below the small dune where they were, and took the photo without alerting them.

"At first, my friend reproached me, but I knew she was happy in the heart because I recorded the true love between her and her boyfriend," Bai said.

Bai's village is near an area visited by tourists, so Bai was not unfamiliar with cameras.

However, when she had her own camera, Bai found there were so many wonders in her daily life.

Among the five photographers, Li Zikang is the only one with some basic art training in painting.

"While taking photos, I always tried to form a picture in my brain," said Li from Honghe Prefecture.

His four daughters are now working in Kunming, so he and his wife help raise two sons of their eldest daughter.

"Each time I took photos at home, my grandsons would come to me, asking what I was doing. Gradually, I formed the habit of asking myself what I was doing," he recalled.

Li Zikang then took photos to reflect more on their daily life, and less about unusual activities. Most of the protagonists in his photos are elderly people and children chatting and playing.

Hard work

Wang said that except the camera and films, Greenpeace gave no money to the farmers.

"Sometimes I have to lose some time planting my crops, because I must try to capture the good scenes every minute and those scenes do not replay themselves," Li Mingfu said.

As a result, Li's plot yielded a lower output than those of his fellow farmers.

On some occasions, the farmer photographers found they had to pay extra money in order to take good photos.

"Various ceremonies in our countryside, such as weddings, funerals and births are the most vivid to photograph, but I had to offer a small sum of money in order to be allowed to do this," Li Mingfu explained.

Each time, Li Mingfu would spend five (63 US cents) or 10 yuan (US$1.25), which is a big sum for him, as his annual income is less than 2,000 yuan (US$250).

At other times, farmer photographers had to travel far, often walking for an entire day across mountains and rivers, to interesting events where they believed there would be good photo opportunities.

No matter how difficult it was, keeping their camera intact was their primary task.

Last summer, when Li Zikang took photos of a harvest, there was a sudden downpour.

"I immediately took off my clothes to wrap around the camera, and used my body to shield it from the rain as I was running home," he said.

The camera was not damaged, but he lost several rolls of film.

These difficulties have not stopped the farmer photographers.

"It is not only a joy for myself, but to many of my village fellows, whose daily life were recorded in photos for the first time," Li Minfu said.

According to Geng, Greenpeace will give the cameras to these photographers.

"Now we will not be able to afford taking photos randomly, but we will save some money for the films and carefully take photos of some precious scenes. It enables us to express our feelings," said Xiong Guizhi, a 41-year-old Pumi woman from Weixi County in Diqing Prefecture.

(China Daily June 13, 2006)