The Great Wall, more than 5000 kilometers long, has been in existence for 2000 years, and depending on such factors as time, location and circumstances, the images of the wall has varied in the eyes of different people. What one person sees is often what another misses. In the lens of photographer Li Shaobai, the Great Wall is reflected in a variety of images ranging from cows and sheep grazing by the wall to elderly farmers leaning against it for a rest, to crops lying beside it just harvested, to rapeseed plants blossoming along it and wild buckwheat blooming on the mountain slopes around it... and, long after the flames of war have died out on its watchtowers, the calm and indifference of the Great Wall. But the photographer is not content only with capturing the architectural beauty of the Great Wall. He also has incorporated his own sensibilities and experiences in a quiet and harmonius way through his careful selection of settings, the tempo of his narratives and the composition of the scenes he has captured. Despite a restrained approach to revealing his personal feelings, his pictures inevitably are tinged with their subtle but insistent presence whether the photograph itself is in bright light or haze.
