This evening we went to the ‘Roots Contemporary’ Gallery in Ixelles, to an exhibition of the work of an Italian photographer, Patrizia Bonanzinga, entitled  Interior Fuijan. Bonanzinga has been working on Chinese themes since 1995. In 2004 she published a photographic work about the Chinese coal industry, The Road to Coal. In the current exhibition, Bonanzinga goes into the interior of a series of Tulou, the huge, round, fortified houses of the Hakka people and captures everyday life: the shrines to ancestors, the carefully swept kitchens with slippers stacked against chairs, the wood and brick passageways, etc. This sense of timelessness is juxtaposed with the frenetic development of modern China. It is a sobering but somehow reassuring contrast. Maybe the Hakka will be swept away, but not just yet and, when they and their Tulous float away on the high tide of modernity, they will doubtless still be inside, sweeping their kitchens and praying to their ancestors…