Faces of Fuling

STRESSFUL CHOICES

Yang Fanglin revisits the classroom where she studied English in the mid-1990s and took on the name Emily, after Emily Brontë. Back then the government assigned jobs to graduates. “You didn’t have to make many decisions,” she says. “Now there are so many options, which creates pressure.”

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Faces of Fuling

CAREER PATH

When Liao Chaoli studied English, he chose to go by the bold name of Mo Money. Today he teaches English to high schoolers in Chongqing.

Faces of Fuling

RIVER VIEW

Huang Dejian, the director of the White Crane Ridge Underwater Museum, stands in the viewing gallery 130 feet beneath the surface of the Yangtze River.

Faces of Fuling

FROM NOODLES TO TILES

When the Huang family's popular noodle restaurant was demolished as part of Fuling’s redevelopment, they opened a tile shop. “In two years this will all be big buildings,” says Huang Xiaoqiang, posing with his wife, Feng Xiaoqin. “And they’ll need ceramic tiles.”

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Faces of Fuling

UPWARDLY MOBILE

Chen Zhengyong—who called himself Jimmy in his English classes—grew up on a farm with only an eighth of an acre of land. “My parents would slaughter a pig when they had to pay school fees,” he says. Now a teacher, he owns a car and four apartments and sends his daughter, Chen Hongni (shown at left), to a private boarding school.

Faces of Fuling

ENGLISH TUTOR

Dai Xiaohong, the son of illiterate farmers, studied English in school, using the name William Jefferson Foster, partly in honor of President Clinton. Now fluent in English, he gives private lessons in coastal Zhejiang Province, where students come from families of entrepreneurs.

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Faces of Fuling

PATIENT FATHER

Fisherman Huang Zongguo sits in a mah-jongg shop, waiting to collect his daughter from school.

Faces of Fuling

BOATBUILDER

Huang Zongming stands next to a fishing boat he’s making. He began working with metal because “nobody buys those wooden boats anymore.”