One of China's top Instagram hotspots is Xiapu County, a rural peninsula of fishing villages, beaches and lush hills. Except the fishermen towing nets are models. The buffalos are props. Even the mist isn't real: It's smoke from straw burning out of frame.
The story of Xiapu is not so much about photography, staged versus authentic, real versus fake, but more about how we travel: we want the real world to match what we dream it is. Locals are then too happy to oblige, turning their environment into a large Disneyland ready to be photographed instead of being experienced.
At a park created for photo touring groups, visitors are shooting a set-up seen where a female model posing has a farmer is walking ducks under banyan trees. Straw is burnt to create a foggy effect.
The entrance fee to the photo park is about $3. Do visitors care that it’s a fake reality? For most it doesn’t matter as long as they can take “beautiful” photos.
A “fisherman” rowing his boat in a mudflat used for ostreiculture seashell farming.
The “fisherman” is actually paid $30 to pose for a touring photographers group. He has removed the boat engine and put on a conic straw hat for this two hours photo session during which he is directed via megaphone by a tour guide on the bridge.
At a park for photo touring groups, a model dressed up as an ancient farmer is pulling a buffalo under banyan trees straw to create smog effect on a set-up scene where a model dressed up as an ancient farmer is puling a buffalo. Fog created by burning straw and a smoke machine adds to the atmosphere.
A woman is burning straw to create smog effect on a set-up scene where a model dressed up as an ancient farmer is puling a buffalo.
The photo set of the “farmers” pulling the buffalo is one of the most popular and iconic of the Xiapu photo tours. Photo-tourists come in the morning when the sun is shining through the leaves of the banyan trees, showing its rays across the straw smoke.
The buffalo, star of the of park, is taking a break in between shoot, tied to a billboard showing visitors the photo they will try and replicate.
At a famous viewpoints a concrete stage has been set-up to accomodate the large number of photographers who have come to shoot the “fishermen” at sunset.
A tour guide is radioing instructions to the paid “fishermen” below.
The “fishermen” carry large triangular nets on their shoulders along the beach, for two hours. A task for which they are paid $30.
At some photo spots the landscape has been remodeled to make it more “photogenic”. Here the ud has been shaped to look like a fish. The round fishing nets are no longer i use but are maintained for the photoshoots.
Two photographers on a tour are heading back to their bus, walking past a billboard promoting another spot and showing the photos that can be shot there. Between 2008 and 2019, the number of tourists visiting the region, once known primarily for agriculture and fishing, increased 10-fold, according to official statistics.
In Banyueli village, Zhong Lianjiao a 90-year-old woman of She ethnic group sitting at her home below framed pictures shot of her by photo groups. They typically pay her rmb 100 for each photo session.
At Banyueli village, tourists take pictures of a fellow traveler dressed up as a farmer, holding a buffalo in leash, posing for a souvenir photo. Buffalo and costumes are rented by locals for photos.
A photo of Lei Lushou a farmer wanted in on Xiapu’s tourism boom. He adopted a buffalo that had been headed for the slaughterhouse, hoping to mirror the success of the “farmer” photographers were flocking to see amid the banyan trees. He is renting his buffalo as well as costumes that visitors can rent for their photo-shoot.