A local Miao woman adorns her hair with pieces of traditional silver.

During the ceremony, the shaman would wear his costume and carry his sword and a half-opened umbrella, walking like a cat. For the next four years, he could not change his clothes or bathe. At the end of the fourth year, the drum would be taken back to the mountains, taking with it all the diseases, the villagers believed.

Saving the jia

Photographer captures heavenly locales

Liang had only organized the ceremony twice and it had not been held since 1984, because the villagers were afraid of being called superstitious.

"We can see the drum worshipping performance onstage, but it has been changed. We can only find descriptions of the ceremony in historical documents. There is no record of images," Jiang says.

Jiang, 63, a retired railway bureau worker from Guangxi's Liuzhou city, became a shutterbug in 1985, focusing on subjects like motorcycles, migrant workers and Miao villages.

When he first arrived in Yaogao, a mountainous area with a population of some 3,100, in 2000, he was attracted to the ancient wooden buildings and the simple and honest Miao people.

The arduous project took its toll on his health, but Jiang maintained his enthusiasm. He visited the village two or three times a year and stayed about one month each time, bringing his own gas tank to provide heat to boil herbal medicines.

"I'm not satisfied with the superficial images my camera has caught. I want to catch their inner spirit, and thoroughly and systematically record life from birth to death, their lifestyle, living conditions and folk culture," Jiang says.