A visitor walking around the remains of The Wonderland Theme Park, a construction project on the north-east outskirts of Beijing that was abandoned.

It was always an odd sight. For most, Beijing’s Wonderland was glimpsed from a car, or bus, en route to the Great Wall of China. A double-take was all that most remembered, wondering if they had actually just seen what appeared to be a half-finished Disneyland next to farmland on the outskirts of the city.

For those with time to spare after a day to the Great Wall, or just a sense of curiosity, the dilapidated foundations provided a pit-stop and chance to wander through a strange but intriguing failed building project.

It appears however that this unique place is no more. According to Shanghaiist, it seems that demolition began in late April. The park is making way for a supermarket apparently.

I stopped of at Beijing’s Wonderland last year, as part of an assignment. Here are a few images from a couple of hours wandering the ruins…

A man cycles past The Wonderland Theme Park.

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The Great Wall of China at Laolongtou (plus ship)

I have visited the Great Wall of China nearly 20 times over my 6+ years in China. From hiking up its steep steps in the mountains north of Beijing to photographing the crumbling ruins in the country’s western desert regions, I have seen some beautiful sights.

This weekend however I saw perhaps the oddest scene I have witnessed in all my trips to the wall. A ship, run aground, having missed smashing into the wall by a matter of metres.

This scene is from the easternmost part of the Great Wall, at Laolongtou (Old Dragon’s Head) in Shanhaiguan, Hebei Provice, where the wall runs into the Bohai Sea. It’s obviously a very famous and well-visited part of the wall but it appears that someone took a wrong turn recently when trying to navigate this portion of coast in north-east China.

A unique Great Wall photo opportunity.

I wouldn’t of liked to have been the captain who realised that there was an imminent chance he was about to run into, and potentially destroy part of, perhaps the most iconic symbol of the whole nation.

According to local storeowners at the Lalongtou site, the ship ran aground in early November. As of yesterday, it hasn’t moved very far. Get there quick for a very unique Great Wall of China photo opportunity!

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I just wanted to extend a big thank you to all of those who were able to make the opening of MELTDOWN at the weekend in Beijing. The opening was a great success and it was really encouraging to see so many people interested in this project.

A big thanks also to Southern Barbarian who were our hosts and put on a wonderful selection of drinks and delectible Yunnan-style food for us on the afternoon. The prints will be hanging for the next couple of months, so there is still plenty of time to see the show.

If you want to learn more about the project, please visit the Pulitzer Center site for slideshows and articles. There are a few more interesting developments with regards to this project coming soon, so please stay tuned for more news in the coming weeks!

A stream is clogged with rubbish in a small Tibetan town on the Tibetan Plateau. Qinghai Province. 2012

Water pollution has been in the news a lot recently in China. The most notable story that has been circulating of late was the discovery of over 13,000 dead pigs in the Huangpu River outside of Shanghai. It’s another in a long line of stories that highlight the challenges that China faces in managing its waterways as the nation continues its rush to develop.

Reading the coverage of this story led me to think about some of the examples of water pollution I have witnessed in my 6 1/2 years criss-crossing China, documenting some of the country’s most pressing environmental crises. Polluted waterways have not been a rare sight on my travels.

So, here I present a selection of what I believe are some of the most severe examples of water pollution I have witnessed. From the Tibetan Plateau to China’s coastal cities, no region is exempt from the scourge of water pollution.

Explore the links between the images to learn more about the facts behind the water pollution crisis in China.

A man covers his face whilst passing refuse that has gathered on the surface of Dongting Lake, in Hunan Province. 2010

“In China, 320 million people are without access to clean drinking water and 190 million people are drinking water severely contaminated with hazardous chemicals.” – Greenpeace

A figure stands on the edge of a stagnant pool of water in a Tibetan relocation town in Qinghai Province, 2012.

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A jellyfish floats through the water in a tank at the Beijing Aquarium. Great lighting set-up beautifully illuminates these elegant creatures. 13th March, 2013.

Life in China is never dull. That’s one thing that I have learnt living here for the past 6 1/2 years. From one week to the next, there are stories in the news that will astound, surprise and just plain shock you.

Instagram

Visually, this also applies. The country continues to run at breakneck speed, developing itself and its economy, providing visual contradictions and juxtapositions at every turn. There are also quieter moments however, like those that appear in this post.

As well as my professional set-up, I use my iPhone to document my life as a professional photojournalist.

The iPhone and the photo-sharing app Instagram, have become an important part of my professional life, allowing me to share images with a new and wider audience than before.

I spoke with the British Journal of Photography last year about this and some of the impacts this is having on the world of professional photojournalism.

However you feel about the rise of photo sharing sites like Instagram, they are here to stay. They offer us a great way to introduce our work to new audiences and at the same time offer insights into our professional practise.

So, join me on Instagram at sean_gallagher_photo There will be plenty more images like the ones you see in this post. I hope that they will surprise you and help give you both a glimpse into my professional life and help you understand just a little more about China and the other countries in Asia that I travel to!

Time for a spot of tea on a springlike (albeit with slightly grey skies) afternoon in Beijing. 6th March, 2013.

Lindblom Math & Science Academy – Chicago – Photo by Mary Owen – Used with Permission

On Wednesday of this week, I had the unique experience of chatting online for this first time with middle school students at the Lindblom Math and Science Academy in Chicago.

This talk was set-up as part of the News Literacy Project, an organisation that aims to bring journalists into the classroom in the US to help students look critically about news that they are consuming on a day-to-day basis.

The News Literacy Project Website

“The News Literacy Project (NLP) is an innovative national educational program that mobilizes seasoned journalists to help middle school and high school students sort fact from fiction in the digital age.

The project teaches students critical-thinking skills that will enable them to be smarter and more frequent consumers and creators of credible information across all media and platforms. It seeks to light a spark of interest in students to seek information that will make them more knowledgeable about their communities, the nation and the world.” – The News Literacy Project Website

It was a real honour to be invited into the student’s classroom (in a cyber-sense) to talk about issues related to China, the nation’s economy, growth and the changes in life for the Chinese people. I tried to emphasise to the students that China, as a subject , is one that we all need to understand better as the world’s most populous nation begins to affect all of our lives.

Please click on the link above and check out some of the work the NLP is doing in bringing journalists into classrooms across the US.

Lindblom Math & Science Academy – Chicago – Photo by Mary Owen – Used with Permission

China Dialogue – 2013

A couple of quick links today to some recent published work. The first is on the excellent China Dialogue website. If you haven’t had a chance to view the CD website before, it really is a very good hub of all environment-related news from China, with contributors from all sectors. It is presented bilingually, therefore reaching a wide readership in both China and abroad.

They recently ran my story ‘Between the Glacier and the Dam’, looking at how climate change is affecting one community on the south-east edge of the Tibetan Plateau.

Deutsche Welle – 2013

The second publication was an interview with the German media organisation Deutsche Welle. I was interviewed about my recent work covering climate change on the Tibetan Plateau and some of my approaches to the project. Unfortunately, this interview is only in Chinese!

Hope you enjoy the links and have a great week.

A Tibetan Plateau Diary

For the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. To view the full gallery of images.

“Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us” — Oscar Wilde

I’ve never been one for keeping a diary. My parents encouraged me to keep one from a young age, but numerous half-filled notebooks are evidence of my failed attempts. Early on however, I realized that photography and the experience of looking at an image were much more effective in helping me to remember where and when I was at a certain place, but most importantly, what and how I was feeling when I was there.

This past summer and autumn, I traveled across the Tibetan Plateau, documenting some of the threats from climate change to the people and ecosystems of the “Roof of the World.” As I traveled, I carried with me my iPhone, along with my normal professional equipment.

A Tibetan Plateau Diary

For the past year and a half I have been taking pictures with my phone, mostly using it as a way to document smaller moments, or objects and things that I just wanted to record as a reminder for myself. This new tool has become my diary.

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A Tibetan nomad in the Amdo region of the Tibetan Plateau. 2012

For the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

“I was forced to move here three years ago. Before, I was a nomad. I’m not happy with what has happened,” explained Dhakpa as we stood on the dusty street corner. (Dhakpa’s name and those of other Tibetans in the story have been changed to protect their identity.) The wind swept through the valley in which we stood, dirt and sand swirling around our feet. Nearby, large piles of refuse started to shuffle at the edges as the wind picked up.

We were standing in the outskirts of the town of Zaduo, a bustling little Tibetan community in the southeast of Qinghai Province, on the border with the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Surrounded by mountains and rolling green highland grasslands, it was described in my guidebook as “one of the remote [towns] on the plateau.”

Before us lay dusty streets, flanked on either side by a series of one-story yellow buildings that made up a “relocation village” built a few years previously to house the new influx of Tibetan nomads from the surrounding grasslands.

Nestled deep in the Sanjiangyuan region of southern Qinghai, the grasslands are home to the sources of the Yangtze, Yellow and Mekong Rivers. In recent decades, however, the grasslands on the “roof of the world” have become progressively degraded, many scientists believe as a result of rising temperatures and drying caused by climate change.

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CNN Photo Blog

CLIMATE CHANGE ON THE TIBETAN PLATEAU – CNN PHOTO BLOG

Excerpt…

The majority of glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau in central Asia are shrinking rapidly, according to a comprehensive study published this year in the Nature Climate Change journal.

Photographer Sean Gallagher recently visited the region to document how rising temperatures have affected the vulnerable communities and ecosystems on “the roof of the world.” …Read and view more on CNN

International Herald Tribune

INDIE FILMMAKERS FEEL HEAVY HAND OF BEIJING – INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

Excerpt… Independent filmmaking is tough anywhere in the world, but in China, especially, it is not a vocation for the faint of heart.

A recent attempt to hold a festival of independent film at a public art gallery in front of 500 people was thrown into chaos after a power failure in the middle of the first screening… Read more on the IHT website.