Arts & Leisure
Window to an unknown world
By Melissa Wood
York teen David "Den" Nichols is preparing an exhibit of photographs taken during his five-month stay in China studying in Beijing and living with host families in remote villages. Nichols is seen here with some of the children he met during his stay. The exhibit begins July 10 at the York Public Library.
Courtesy photo
YORK - A local teenager who spent five months of his junior year studying in Beijing, China, will be displaying an exhibition of photographs that he took during his trip at the York Public Library beginning next week.
Most of the photos, said David "Den" Nichols, were taken at a remote villages in the Guizhou Province, an area mostly unseen by Western eyes.
"These villages haven't changed in 500 years," said Nichols, who studied at the Beijing Normal School in 2006 under the School Year Abroad program as a student of the Taft School in Watertown, Conn. "It's really isolated."
Nichols studied in Beijing with 59 other students from around the United States in the academically rigorous high school and second language immersion program while living with a Chinese host family.
He spent three weeks living with host families in the villages of Raorao, home to Buyi ethnic Chinese; Jichang tun, home to Han ethnic Chinese, and the province's capital, Gaoya, a Miao ethnic village. Nichols said getting to the villages entailed a 30-hour train ride, followed by a bus ride and then an eight-hour hike.
"Geographically it's like impossible to get to," said Nichols, who added that the villages were much different from what we might think of China - the quickly growing industrialized nation - because of the vastness of the land, and that there were no roads and people farmed terraced rice paddies built within the sides of the mountains that surround them.
Nichols said the two-dozen photos to be included in the exhibition were not planned but taken when he was inspired by the people and their unique, ancient culture.
"I didn't go around and look for pictures," said Nichols. "They were just at the moment."
Moments such as when the group came over a ridge as they were hiking in and could see the entire valley, including the village, for four hours before reaching it.
Nichols said his photographs are essentially an even mix of landscapes and portraits of the people he met, whom he described as very friendly.
"We stayed with host families, and they gave us food, places to sleep and everything," said Nichols, who said even if the school hadn't paid for the students' room and board, "they definitely would have done it for free."
Nichols said his knowledge of Mandarin was immensely helpful on the trip, but in some of the villages only the children spoke Mandarin. He said mostly young children and the elderly live in the villages because middle-aged and young adults go to the city to work, and send their pay back to their families.
He said some of his photos were taken as all the children crowded around him, wanting to see their photos.
"You're taking pictures and they want you to show them the photo that you take on the camera so they make you take picture after picture and you show it to them," said Nichols. "So it's really interesting to see the way they react."
Nichols said that few foreigners had visited the district where his host family lived, and at first he was surprised by how people stared at him - and kept staring even after he made eye contact.
"They just keep looking," said Nichols, who explained that their manners are completely different than ours. "That's not a rude thing to do. That shocked me in the beginning."
Nichols, who was born in Newport Beach, Calif., has lived in York since he was eight months old. He will be a senior at Taft in the fall, and is spending the summer in Boston, Mass., as an intern at the architectural firm Fasaki Associates, an opportunity that is allowing him to explore his two main interests of architecture and international relations.
Nichols said the firm not only designs buildings but also does city planning, landscape architecture and engineering, and even designed the plants for the Beijing Olympic Green.
"They do projects all over the world," said Nichols.
Nichols' photographs will be on display at York Public Library from July 10 through Aug. 31 in the Kennebunk Room. The public is invited to an opening reception on Tuesday, July 10, from 5 to 7 p.m.
