In Between the Civilized: A Glimpse from Zhangjiajie

When we speak of a city, we often speak of its beauty.

Zhangjiajie is one of those places that easily earns praise—its otherworldly mountains piercing through clouds, traditional wooden villages tucked into narrow stone alleys, and the surreal calm that pulls travelers into reverie. It is a place where the natural and the manmade blur, where tourists pause to photograph the peaks but rarely glance downward.

And yet, this photograph was taken by looking down. Down an alley—wet, narrow, and worn. A rusted garbage cart stands alone, carrying a straw hat on top like a symbol of its unseen labourer. The man behind the cart had already rushed away, out of frame, swallowed by the daily rhythm of the street.

The alley is clean. But it isn’t clean by chance.

There’s an unspoken belief in modern society: that cleanliness is a sign of civilization. That order, hygiene, and harmony on the street reflect a well-run, proud, developed place. But if you look closer, civilization doesn’t just appear—it is maintained. It is swept, carried, emptied, and scrubbed—often by those who are never named, never thanked, and never included in the postcards.

It lives between the performance of beauty and the labour that enables it. Between the romanticized gaze and the neglected body. The alley isn’t just a backdrop, it’s a space of movement, of passing through, of quiet work that sustains the story others come to witness.

A city is not just its monuments or its mountains. It is its people. All of them. Even—especially—the ones we don’t stop to photograph.

Sometimes, the most honest image of a place is not in its landscape, but in the cart left behind in a shadowed alley—still damp from the morning sweep.