Seat of the pants
Even in familiar locations, you can find new life in shots if you look hard
This is the gorge of the Nujiang River in China’s far southwest, close to Myanmar. Nujiang means ‘Angry River’ in Chinese, and for a good reason; it’s completely unnavigable, unswimmable. On top of that, it’s all gorge, from north where it comes in from Tibet, to south where it enters Myanmar and becomes the Salween. It’s for this reason that, for centuries, the standard way of crossing the gorge was by means of rope slides, called liu suo. In case you’re wondering, they’re in pairs, close to each other, sloping in opposite directions, so that if you forgot something, or as in my case needing to re-shoot, you just climb up a bit and take the return rope. I was shooting my Tea Horse Road book, crisscrossing the ancient routes between Yunnan and Tibet, and this was one of the more remote journeys. In the old days, they used to put horse caravans across the gorge in this way, one animal at a time – sometimes this would go wrong, resulting in fatal accidents.
So I was delighted, and a little surprised, when driving up the road near Fugong we actually came across a liu suo. These days they use steel cables rather than fraying ropes, which is infinitely more reassuring. I photographed some children going home for lunch on one of these. A young boy and his sister shared the tackle that everyone here has – a pulley with a large hook underneath, on which you sling a loop of rope which is your seat for the journey.
Well, I thought, if the kids can do it I don’t have much of an excuse not to try it out. It’s a picture opportunity, isn’t it? So, off we go, with a local Lisu guy as my copilot. Exhilarating, a bit like Blackpool Pleasure Beach without the safety rating. I hold the camera above and right as far as my arm allows. Check the result. Yes, a really good use of the 14mm end of the 14-24mm zoom that I don’t recall having ever having had a need for before. Just one slight problem. I’ve managed to include my own left hand in the picture, clutching the pulley, knuckles embarrassingly white. A re-shoot is in order, so off we go again. We climb
further up the side of the gorge to the other cable, and settle in again on the ropes looped under our bums.
The only way to get a picture of just the cable and my companion – who incidentally is drunk (from less than a meter I’m overwhelmed by the alcohol on his breath, and it’s only 11 in the morning, for heaven’s sake) – is to hold the camera up and to the right with both hands. This creates a new issue, even as we’re accelerating towards the middle of the gorge. My boozy friend is suddenly alarmed for my safety as I dangle handsfree on my rope, and looks at me. This I don’t want. No, I wave quickly, don’t look at me! Finally, this all happening very rapidly, he looks back in the direction we’re travelling, and I have time for just one shot, this one. It’s enough, but when I stop to think about it, I sort of agree retrospectively with my companion. Doing a ‘look-ma-no-hands’ wasn’t the cleverest thing that I’ve ever done.