Big Picture: Belongings, by Huang Qingjun - in pictures

Posing proudly outside their often humble homes with their woks and stoves, sideboards and sewing machines, they have not been swept along by the country’s unstoppable race towards wealth – yet. →
Photograph: Huang Qingjun

If you look more closely, though, modern life has arrived even in far-flung corners of rural China, where most of these photographs were taken. A couple outside their yurt in Inner Mongolia have a TV, satellite dish and digital clock alongside their faded furniture – unimaginable a decade ago, when photographer Huang Qingjun started this project. Today, as living standards rise, fridges, washing machines, phones, DVD players and stereos are increasingly the norm, even among the very poor. → Photograph: Huang Qingjun

Many make do with just the essentials for living, such as the gas canisters, pots and pans belonging to the family on a boat in Guangdong province. → Photograph: Huang Qingjun

By contrast, a young man sitting outside his Beijing apartment block is surrounded by his collection of china vases, leather furniture, a flatscreen TV, a car and a stereo displayed as lovingly as if on show in a department store. → Photograph: Huang Qingjun

Qingjun persuaded people to take part by carefully explaining his project, usually more than once; showing them previous shots, once he’d got going; and, occasionally, paying them. That, and telling them it was a good excuse for a spring clean. → Photograph: Huang Qingjun

It took most people an hour or so to bring their possessions outside and arrange them neatly. “They weren’t like people from the city, who have so much stuff that if you asked them to do it, they’d say it was too much effort,” says Qingjun. You can’t help wonder how long it would take anyone reading this. Photograph: Huang Qingjun