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Zhangye, Xiahe County, Gansu, China

A Single Encounter.

16 photographs

There are places we remember for their landscapes, and there are places we remember because of the people we met there.

The Chinese idiom 一面之交 (yī miàn zhī jiāo) describes a relationship formed through a single encounter. At first, I understood it simply as “meeting someone once.” It wasn’t until I spent time in the villages around Zhangye that I began to understand its deeper meaning.

Most of the people I photographed knew we would probably never meet again. Yet they welcomed me with a warmth that felt effortless. A smile, a shared meal, a short conversation, or simply a quiet moment of curiosity was often enough to create a connection that lasted far longer than the encounter itself.

Surrounded by mountains, grasslands, and open skies, people seemed deeply rooted in the world around them. There was little urgency, little pretense, only a quiet generosity and an openness toward strangers. Whether Han Chinese, Tibetan, or Hui Muslim, I was repeatedly met with kindness that asked for nothing in return.

These experiences changed the way I approached photography. I stopped searching for extraordinary moments and began noticing the beauty of ordinary human encounters, just moments, the way they simply are.

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