Green Dragon, Sombre Warrior

The ancient Chinese divided the zodiac into four quadrants and assigned a ruler to each - the Green Dragon of the East, the Scarlet Phoenix of the South, the White Tiger of the West and the Sombre Warrior of the North. As manifestations in animal form of wood, fire, metal and water - four of the Five Elements that underlay Creation - they symbolized the belief that even the most distant realms of All Under Heavan, though diverse, existed in harmony.
Taking the same frame of reference, Liam D'Arcy Brown set out to travel to the four corners of the People's Republic to reconcile for himself modern China's seemingly irreconcilable extremes. His 10,000-mile journey took him to an isolated fishing community in the East China Sea, a tropical holiday resort on Hainan Island, a Muslim city on the Silk Road and a riverside village in remote Manchuria. In each he discovered aspects of China that the wider world seldom glimpses. And amongst the variety of her peoples, the tangled web of her many histories and the astonishing contrasts of her physical and social geography, he found common themes: the hardships faced now that the iron rice bowl has been taken away; the strength millions have found in religion; the corruption and entrepreneurship that flourish in the rush to modernize; the growing nationalism that is drowning out minority voices; and gentler, domestic pleasures - pork buns steaming in a bamboo basket, gold Chinese characters pasted to a doorway on a red paper diamond, a battered thermos flask stencilled with the Double Happiness motif.