MFAD faculty member Stephen Doyle recently traveled to Shanghai and sent back the following dispatch. It is such a beautifully vivid recount, that we asked him if he would share it with the MFAD community. His response was characteristically generous: “It would be my pleasure to share this with the MFADs.”

It is our pleasure to be shared with . . .

We missed the big snowstorm that was moving across Shanxi Province, but in the capital Tiayuan, there was an alternate aerial fallout—coal dust—and we watched with fascination as residents dusted off their cars with giant soft car mops, a yard long, and on six foot handles, created expressly for that purpose. From the curb they wiped off their vehicles to remove the layer of gray that obscures the windshield, and revealed brightly colored cars under the fallout from the previous night. Shanxi is the coal capital of China, an hour flight SouthWest of Beijing, or two hours fight NorthWest from Shanghai. The World Trade Hotel, where we stayed in Taiyuan, was festooned with red lanterns and twinkling lights, and in the lobby as we checked in, a singer was singing “Killing me Softly” under indoor palm trees wrapped with strings of lights, directly across from a huge mural of seven multicolored horned and fire-breathing dragons inextricably tangled together among a cloud of steam of their own making. Clusters of businessmen slouched in padded chairs and puffed endlessly on cigarettes, in a cloud of smoke of their own making! Killing me softly.

We came to Taiyuan to photograph a baby who was the benefactor of a program initiated by Johnson & Johnson which is a neo-natal resuscitation program. So this little one-and-a-half year old boy, nicknamed “Pee Pee” (you can’t make this stuff up) was a living miracle to his parents, and testament to this program which revives infants who suffer from asphyxia at birth. Simple enough to cure, but allowing OB nurses to do this, and training them required a change in policy at the level of the Ministry of Health, and that is the challenge that my J&J colleagues have accomplished, five years ago, with a net result of millions of lives saved in that short time frame. What a great mission to come here to capture this story. But back to Pee Pee (which means little naughty one.) In China, tots wear pants that are bottomless. And frontless. Like chaps. But commando-style—nothing underneath. All equipment is totally exposed. Convenient for going potty, but certainly a challenge for Western-style photography. PeePee is the word for it! . . .

[Read Part 2 tomorrow]

(Photos of school and street scape in Tiayuan by Stephen Doyle)