The genre here is an interesting mix of personal travel and documentary. Mostly, though, it rests on whatever attraction a talented, famous and socially curious photographer can produce. The images are gorgeous color, visually strong as you would expect from one of the most successful of Alexi Brodvitche's students, who also brings to travels an unusual ability to relate to people and a curiosity about other's lives.
The book has five sections, an introduction written by the photographer, and four broad subject groups for the images: Landscape, People, Work, and Living.
Arnold gets beyond the typical tourist, aesthetically of course, but also in terms of useful social information, getting into homes and places of works with an eye for social information.

I hear on the radio that Eve Arnold has died. I search for her book on China and look again at these magnificient photographs, documents of landscape, life and people all over China at the end of the 70s. How much of the way of life shown here remains today? Much, perhaps most, will have changed in the 30 years since then! To the better or worse? Impossible to give a simple answer, yes or no. There is poetry in the images. It is the poetry that I remember. So the images will stay with me. Thank you, Eve. (I-12) ( )