Author Description

"Madong Ma's heroic efforts to save parts of his hometown from flooding included physically disassembling, transporting and rebuilding many of the structures, along with some 10,000 trees, to a resort hundreds of miles away that he was constructing for this very purpose. Kenro Izu undertook to photograph the remaining majestic houses and other traditional structures of the ancient village for posterity. Some of the homes were still inhabited by people who had grown up there, and who wanted to live and die where their ancestors had done so. Many of the homes still had altars to these ancestors; in others, the altars had been replaced by old posters of Chairman Mao. Still others were decorated with photographs of Lenin or Marx, the iconic images of the Cultural Revolution days, aging together with the buildings themselves. Fuzhou had become symbolic place, giving trace reminders of the life of people before the dam was built. The resulting book serves as a reminder that many places on Earth could serve as bridges to our past; but often instead are simply been obliterated in the interest of land development. Abandoned villages, ruined houses, and the last remaining residents - these are the monuments of humankind." -- Publisher's website (viewed February 21, 2023)