The View From Behind the Lens

Mark Leong arrived in China in 1989 on the day after the Tiananmen Square massacre, carting a camera, a degree in visual and environmental studies, and a vague plan to get in touch with his roots through photography. Early photos documented the area around his mother’s ancestral village in the south; during his next trip, he became interested in Beijing’s youth culture and underground rock bands. More recently, Leong has moved out of the margins entirely, focusing on China’s surging consumer culture. Along the way, his palette has evolved from shadowy black and white to sharp, explosive color. Since 1997 he has lived in Beijing, where he met and married a fellow Chinese-American expat. They have twin two-year-old boys. Leong’s work has appeared in in National Geographic, Business Week, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and other publications. A native of Sunnyvale, Calif., in the Bay Area, he published his first book, China Obscura, in 2004.

ON WANDERLUST It was the classic “Roots” scenario—I was trying to find out if there was any Chinese soul inside of me. My family has been in the U.S. for over 100 years. I wouldn’t say I didn’t have pride in being ethnically Chinese, but there just wasn’t much of a connection. I found that I was a complete outsider, and I had no idea what was going on. That’s why I didn’t put captions on the photos in my first book, because everything was so strange and surreal.

ON INSPIRATION I stay here because it’s really interesting, not because it’s my motherland. There’s surging history here. There are so many problems in China that spring out of having such a huge population: the way people treat each other, the pollution, the way people treat the environment. That makes it interesting for a photographer—death and destruction are actually good to photograph. That’s partially why I focus now on mass consumption: It’s more challenging not to photograph suffering all the time.

ON IRONY The fact that this is a communist country, that they exploit their labor like you wouldn’t believe, that these workers can’t organize, and even if they do, it’s all tied to the company, it’s completely ironic. But the Chinese sense of irony is very limited at this point. They see differences, for sure—like, this person’s rich and I’m not—but they’re thinking that they want to be rich, too.
Recently I was photographing this guy who’s worth about half a billion dollars. He started as a motorcycle repairman, and now he’s got one of the biggest motorcycle companies in the country. People are constantly switching jobs and constantly having ideas on how to upgrade things for themselves. That drive, that sense of entrepreneurship, is very interesting to me.

ON “LITTLE EMPERORS” I feel positive about the one-child families. It means this generation of productive adults is able to take their assets and improve their lives, because they have fewer dependents.
Having kids of my own makes me more empathetic with the little emperors. I might see some spoiled kids on the street, telling off their grandma in front of everybdy, but they’re not all that way. They’re mostly nice kids. It’s also a better-educated generation. When I visit a college, I see these smart, globalized kids who have an idea of what they want to do. It’s impressive.

ON RAISING CHILDREN IN BEIJING My kids just love our apartment, because we have a big window facing out on a construction site. We’ve been here for six months, and suddenly there’s a 10-story building there with construction workers crawling all over it. It’s our very own Bob the Builder.
If it weren’t for the pollution, we might think of staying here permanently. In Beijing the air coats your body, and many days it hurts your throat. This is development; it’s part of what makes things exciting here. But it’s a health issue for the boys.

ON SEX There’s definitely a sex-for-sale culture here. Every city has a huge “barbershop district,” where you see these “salons” where there’s only one hair dryer inside; clearly, the girls are not there to cut your hair. Another surprising thing: there are so many sex-toy shops. They call them “Adult Health Protection.”
I photographed a man who wanted to start a soft-core porn magazine—tasteful pictures of ladies in Ming Dynasty costumes, that sort of thing. The government rejected his license, even though in Beijing, on every block you see shops with dildos in the window. It’s just another example of this divide between official, communist culture and the culture on the streets, this Wild West capitalism.

ON URBAN RENEWAL It’s hard for the big machines to get into the narrow alleyways, so they have migrant workers with sledgehammers come in. You have these crews of guys that can level out a block per day. They walk through a neighborhood, coming down from the roofs, taking out the buildings. The little traditional houses aren’t built that well; the ceilings are grass and paper. These neighborhoods just disappear in a cloud of dust.

Interview by Lindsey McCormack

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