Geoff A Howard
PHOTOGRAPHER

Gansu Province, China

My first major foray with a digital camera was a long trip in China. The cities of Beijing and Shanghai were interesting indeed, but the western province of Gansu far more so. Much of the province is Muslim, much is Buddhist; what we think of as China is probably a minority. Tibet is not far away, the Labrang Monastery at Xiahe is the largest Tibetan monastery outside Tibet itself; at Tsewey, the religion is Bon - the original belief in Tibet before Buddhism was introduced. The Ganjia grasslands have the emptiness of inner Asia, a thinly-populated prairie that stretches to Lhasa.