The series explores the district of Qi Lihe, which sits on the outskirts of Lanzhou city in Gansu Province, north-western China.
It is home to thousands of Muslim migrant families who have left their homeland within the Linxia Hui autonomous prefecture and arrived into the city searching for job opportunities and ultimately, a better life. For hundreds of years the Hui and Dongxiang Muslim minorities have farmed the arid land surrounding their ancestral villages.
In recent years though, desertification has forced this once workable landscape to begin a dramatic change, impelling many modern day farmers and their families to migrate to the provincial capital in order to survive.
The photographs below are from Stephen’s Sin City:
The Sin City series documents life in China’s self-styled ‘city of dreams’. Situated on the western side of the Pearl River Delta, this semi-autonomous region of China is the sole territory within the People’s Republic that permits gambling.
In 2009, Macau’s thirty two casinos are reported to have made US $14.875 billion in gambling revenue, doubling that of Las Vegas.
See Stephen Kelly’s Foto8 Stories of the Week:
Qi Lihe
Sin City
Stephen Kelly’s website