Research & Case Study: effect of development on minority groups in rural Guizhou

My journeys through photography has helped me believe one thing "Its not just about the pictures you take, but about where photography takes you and the people you meet along the way. For example, if it weren't for photography, I probably won't think of visiting many of the locations in Guizhou, especially those that are hidden deep where roads and tourists haven't reached.

Apart from photography, I am also interested in economics, which I am studying at school. I was able to observe many interesting phenomenons throughout the years. For example, how government aid can affect the development of a region, or how development can affect the environment and cultural diverseness of the region. This ties into the concept of government intervention and externalities in economics. One of the observations I made is that government aid usually comes in the form of developing infrastructure for tourism, allowing the region to generate money in the long run. However, in these villages exposed to tourism things have become very commercialized, with villagers only wearing traditional clothing for taking photos with tourists for money. Also, in places near well-developed tourist locations, villagers I have talked to told me that water from local rivers have been unusable due to waste, but tap water has been provided instead and it is way more convenient.

This, I believe, is the magic about photography, and why I believe so firmly in the quote I mentioned above, because I probably never would have done this, never would have talked to these people, never would have visited these places if it weren't for my pursuit of my passion in photography.

These observations deeply interested me and I was inspired to write a research paper about the economic theory that is behind it. This perfectly blends two of my passions. Furthermore, because of my desire to make this paper not completely theoretical, only referring to secondary research and theories. Therefore, I split it into two parts, one part is research on secondary sources, the second part is a case study that I conducted first-hand. I travelled to Guizhou several times for this case study, visiting the connections I have made before while photographing, and also meeting and connecting with new people. I ended up collecting more than 200 responses for my data, including surveys and interviews.

Through this process, I got the chance to experience what it is like writing a formal study paper. I learned how to plan my time out so that this paper is finished efficiently, how to organize my sources and writing so that I could easily keep track of everything, and how to conduct research and communicate with people to get knowledge and information.

Furthermore, if the previous experience of assign stranger for consent to photos was challenging in terms of the courage to approach strangers, this was even harder. I had to go to the doors of homes and school and introduce myself and my purpose and convince them to trust me and give me the information I wanted. This often lead me to either dispointment (when the person refuses to share information) or surprise, like the time a teacher at a school agreed to help me survey two entire grades and provide me with 100+ results. It definitely an unmatched experience, because I have never done anything quite similar before.

Overall, I was able to reach my goal of conducting a research paper inspired by my observations made while pursing my passion for photography and connects with my other passion, economics. Through the process of pursuing this goal, I ran into countless challenges and overcame them mostly with communication, leadership, planning and problem solving, and even when some challenges were unsolvable, I was still optimistic, and thought of alternatives that could be done to avoid being stopped. I have also further developed the courage to approach people and build connections to reach a result that I really want.