Randy Olson, Melissa Farlow Photography

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  • Some skiers are challenged by the slopes of the Yin Qi Xing Indoor Skiing Site.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176383.JPG
  • Dancing and singing followed a totem raising ceremony. Tlinglet leaders dressed in colorful traditional clothing for a historic totem raising where seven totem poles were   placed in a Native Alaskan park in Klawock. Many of the 1000 Native Alaskans moved indoors to a gymnasium where festivities continued throughout the day.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075036.jpg
  • A Rapa Nui man with his Belgian girlfriend live in a one-room house that has electricity but no indoor plumbing. The ocean is close by and Polynesians had a knack for colonizing even the most inhospitable oceanic rock.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8059_1477350.JPG
  • A child plays the piano while a woman instructs in the living room of an apartment.<br />
<br />
From Leslie Chang’s story that accompanied these photographs in National Geographic Magazine:<br />
<br />
By the time she was ten, Bella lived a life that was rich with possibility and as regimented as a drill sergeant’s. After school she did homework unsupervised until her parents got home. Then came dinner, bath, piano practice. Sometimes she was permitted television, but only the news. On Saturdays she took a private essay class followed by Math Olympics, and on Sundays a prep class for the middle-school entrance exam and piano lessons. The best moment of the week was Friday afternoon, when school let out early. Bella might take a deep breath and look around, like a man who discovers a glimpse of blue sky from the confines of the prison yard.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176575.JPG
  • A fish tank separates patrons from the kitchen at a restaurant on East Nanjing Road | Shanghai, China
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  • The 3rd China International Automobile Exhibition.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176260.JPG
  • A family siting in the kitchen of their apartment has a complicated family life. The grandparents were farmers and lost the land and their occupations to development. If the grandparents did not have a child they would be homeless. Ironically, the same development that took his home now supports their daughter, Ding, who works in the industrial park occupying the land that was once the father’s farm.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176521.JPG
  • Models at a fashion show wear form fitting red dresses backstage.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176481.JPG
  • Employees at technology company eyou.com use a climbing wall embedded partially into the wall of the conference room creating a faux-silicon-valley atmosphere. <br />
<br />
Eyou is an international mobile game publisher founded in Singapore that has partnered with multinational corporations-namely Facebook, Google, Unity and Twitter.
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  • A teenage girl and her parents relaxing.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176362.JPG
  • A worker in a steel mill in Huaxi village.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176506.JPG
  • A young girl is reflected in windows of the lobby of a modern apartment building.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176472.JPG
  • A young fashion designer in her studio and shop.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176457.JPG
  • A family interacting at dinnertime.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176353.JPG
  • Rachel shops for a new dress to go on an upcoming date. The fashion store called Thre3 is run by her friend on the Bund in Shanghai. Her dressing room opens into a stylish shop and the pod doors take two assistants to close. The green frock has a $2,200 price tag.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1143439.TIF
  • A young girl sits with her parents at the dinner table in their home. This is from Leslie Chang’s story that accompanied these photographs in National Geographic Magazine:<br />
<br />
"By the time she was ten, Bella lived a life that was rich with possibility and as regimented as a drill sergeant’s. After school she did homework unsupervised until her parents got home. Then came dinner, bath, piano practice. Sometimes she was permitted television, but only the news. On Saturdays she took a private essay class followed by Math Olympics, and on Sundays a prep class for the middle-school entrance exam and piano lessons. The best moment of the week was Friday afternoon, when school let out early. Bella might take a deep breath and look around, like a man who discovers a glimpse of blue sky from the confines of the prison yard."
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1143438.TIF
  • Elysee, owner and designer of Zemo Elysee fashion shop with models.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176593.JPG
  • An English teacher presents the letter F to preschool children in a classroom. They watch and mimic the gesture.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176573.JPG
  • A pet lover grooms one of her dogs and sits in her apartment with a friend.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176554.JPG
  • A young woman sits on a barstool in a crowded bar in Guangzhou.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176547.TIF
  • Young people enjoying drinks and conversation in a crowded bar.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176546.JPG
  • Models at a fashion show.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176480.JPG
  • A man gets a pedicure at a luxury day spa.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176388.JPG
  • Reflection in the mirror of a teenage schoolgirl sitting behind her father in a car.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176355.JPG
  • A man is drapes in a cape while he gets a haircut from his daughter-in-law in their apartment.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176305.JPG
  • Shopping for fish at a market.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176275.JPG
  • Fixing eyelashes at the Shenzhen Fashion Show at a Convention Center.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176273.JPG
  • Kids posing with people in Cultural Revolution costumes at a car show.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176269.JPG
  • A model at the 3rd China International Automobile Exhibition.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176265.JPG
  • A young woman shops at the Carrefours Department Store.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176572.JPG
  • A young woman in the food court of a shopping mall.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176537.JPG
  • A bride at the shopping mall.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176376.JPG
  • Some of the 70 couples in the Rose Wedding Festival, a mass marriage.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176365.JPG
  • A teenage girl checks her cell phone commuting to school in a car.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176356.JPG
  • Young kids learning English in preschool.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176296.JPG
  • A woman appears lost in thought at the Armani Club is in the Liu lin Road area of Shanghai that attracts  young people to the scene.
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  • A family eats together in the home they all share.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176606.JPG
  • A young woman on the phone and a guard at the steel mill in Huaxi.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176598.JPG
  • Models on a cattle call.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176592.JPG
  • Models on a cattle call fixing their make up.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176591.JPG
  • An illegal large pet dog exercises on a treadmill at a pet spa.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176582.JPG
  • A pet lover with her dogs and friends.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176553.JPG
  • A man points his camera as a woman checks her cell phone on a busy street in Guangzhou.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176549.JPG
  • A young woman with a camera inside a shopping mall.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176540.JPG
  • A young woman looks at a menu at a restaurant.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176534.JPG
  • A man and woman dance at a restaurant.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176491.JPG
  • Models on a cattle call.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176470.JPG
  • A personal trainer helps a client at the Ozone Fitness Club.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176453.JPG
  • A lone office denizen at night.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176449.JPG
  • Young workers at a rising web company sponsoring the Olympic Games collect tchotchke or trinkets to decorate their desks and cubicles
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176446.JPG
  • Bridesmaids put on makeup and style their hair while getting dressed and preparing for a wedding.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176437.JPG
  • Riding subway line Number 1.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176401.JPG
  • Young people dance under neon lights in the Armani Club in the Liu lin Road area. Bars are a little crazier in south China where there is an abundance of new wealth.
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  • Dancing at a pick up club that has a reputation for mistresses and male prostitutes gathering to connect.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176390.TIF
  • A teenage schoolgirl adjusts her uniform at a desk with a computer. Her portrait hangs on the wall above her.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176343.JPG
  • Commuters in a subway car.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176340.JPG
  • A young woman with her baby and her mother.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176321.JPG
  • A servers watchful eye surveys the restaurant where a couple sits among fish tanks that decorate the room as well as  a television screen on the wall above them.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176319.TIF
  • With food ready on the table, a woman sweeps the floor cleaning an apartment before dinner while her husband watches their young child.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176311.JPG
  • Plastic bags stack up filled with miscellaneous goods at the check-out of a Sam's Club store in China.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176309.JPG
  • Uniformed restaurant workers carry baskets of food from the kitchen for diners. They pass under a canvas sheet that shows a restaurant with people eating.<br />
<br />
All over China, young architects design buildings that are just experiments: throw in a bit of classical modern, a little Prairie style, a few Roman columns. This restaurant feels like you are sitting inside the restaurant – inside the restaurant.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176304.TIF
  • A spa employee at the Mission Hills Golf Club.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176280.JPG
  • A baby in a stroller and two women in an apartment.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176277.JPG
  • A  flamboyant bar in south China attracts new wealth. In the Baby Face Club in Guangzhou, the bartender sets up a stack of glasses, then pours a flaming liquid over the top to make one of the most popular drinks-a Flaming Lamborghini. <br />
<br />
China’s economic engine will change the world. The “Little Capitalist” class or ”Comfort Class” embraces Deng Xiaoping’s revolutionary proclamation, “To get rich is glorious.” <br />
<br />
After 50 years of pent up frustration and stoically weathering the worst social experiment in history—Mao’s Cultural Revolution—this class is ready to lead the charge for the most voracious consumption on the planet.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1143437.TIF
  • A fashionable, young woman texts while sitting in a bar in Beijing. The potential spending power of Chinese women may be enormous in the next decade according to MasterCard International estimates. The total purchasing power of Chinese women living on their own or in married households with no children is likely to rise.
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  • A personal trainer helps a client at the Ozone Fitness Club.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176584.JPG
  • Students in their dorm room at Shanghai's Jiao Tong University.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176579.JPG
  • A young woman fluffs a pillow in her apartment.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176542.JPG
  • A woman carries a tray of glassware while a child plays in the bathroom one afternoon in an opulent home in Huaxi.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176512.JPG
  • The reflection of a woman putting on makeup before a cultural show.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176508.JPG
  • A bride checks out a dining room for her reception while a server looks back at the open door.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176438.JPG
  • A bride talks on a cell phone as her hair is styled for her wedding.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176433.JPG
  • A portrait of a man and his daughter.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176314.JPG
  • Children reading books at an Sam's Club store in Shenzhen.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176306.JPG
  • Red caped Supermen sell phones outside of Total Fitness Club in the mall in Guangzhou, Guangdong province. There are 900 million cell phones in China and the West has long predicted that economic growth would eventually bring democracy. <br />
<br />
As James Mann points out in his book, "The China Fantasy," the idea that China will evolve into a democracy as its middle class grows continues to underlie the U.S.’s China policy, providing the central rationale for maintaining close ties with an unapologetically authoritarian regime.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176463-3.tif
  • A two generation family in their living room.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176603.JPG
  • Two models sleep on the floor with their heads on a pillow before appearing at a fashion show at a bar venue.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176594.JPG
  • A young woman in a bar snaps a photo with her camera.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176558.JPG
  • Trying on clothes and jewelry for an accessory photo shoot.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176552.JPG
  • A steel worker at the Wuhan iron and steel plant is bare-chested and smoking a cigarette.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176523.JPG
  • Women working in a textile factory in Huaxi.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176503.JPG
  • Seated in a room full of cloth covered chairs,  the “farmer” capitalist millionaires in Huaxi Village (Farmers Village), a model farm for the last 45 years meet annually. Even though they are the collective ideal of the capitalist model, they still dress in Mao-ish style outfits and make decisions for the 80 businesses in a socialist forum.<br />
<br />
These “model farmers” were capitalists before it was allowed in China. They started factories, but worked in them secretly (no windows). When government officials came around, all the workers ran out into the fields and pretended to be peasants. They became the first and most successful capitalist exploitation of the collective. Huaxi Village eventually went bankrupt.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176498.JPG
  • Two couples- parents on the left and a newly married couple on the right., eat oranges under a marriage photo hanging on the wall of an apartment in Beijing.
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  • Young workers at their computers in an office.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176452.JPG
  • In an over-the-top, exotic spa, massage parlor, and hotel in the Suzhou Creek area of Shanghail men walk from the locker room through an aquarium tunnel filled with sharks and other endangered species. From there they can play ping pong or watch a movie with their family in their bathrobes, or meet their mistresses in a discreet room.
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  • A family eating dinner together.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176351.JPG
  • The 3rd China International Automobile Exhibition.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176263.JPG
  • A respected older musician plays of fiddle and the music he learned from his own grandfather. In the small community of El Carmen, near Pisco, most locals trace their ancestry to African slaves, brought there generations ago to work in the Peru's cotton plantations. The brightly-colored red walls of his home are adorned with family pictures.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187500.jpg
  • An illegal large pet dog exercises on a treadmill at a pet spa.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176583.JPG
  • Rachel is a “headhunter” for the Comfort Class. She is single and lives at home with her parents who were part of one of the worst social experiments in history. Mao unified the country, but then was responsible for the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, countless famines. <br />
<br />
Then, Deng proclaimed, “To get rich is glorious” and opened the flood gates to the “Special Economic Zone” cities on the south coast, creating the largest peacetime human migration in history. Many 20-somethings say that Tiananmen Square had to be put down or it would have hurt Deng’s economic plans and they would not have their nice apartments with flat screens in every room.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176577.TIF
  • A young woman sits at a table admiring her  latte at Starbucks in Guangzhou.<br />
Starbucks currently operate more than 6,000 stores in over 230 cities in the Chinese mainland, employing more than 60,000 partners.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176548.JPG
  • Models walk through the halls backstage at a fashion show.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176482.JPG
  • A family returns home with groceries in plastic shopping bags.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176360.JPG
  • The 3rd China International Automobile Exhibition.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176259.JPG
  • Susanne from Shenzen is plans to marry her boyfriend in Hong Kong. They take a cab to the knock-off mall to get clothes made for the ceremony. Statistics show that many western men marry Chinese women, but the government promoted a soap opera featuring the opposite situation called “Foreign Babes in Beijing,” featuring western women falling for Chinese men.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1143436.TIF
  • A woman and children inspect new products that bombard Chinese consumers daily. Just keeping up with the new air freshener and portable camera can be overwhelming. They are sitting in a city park, Being Hai Park in Beijing where people ride on paddle boats on the lake.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176521-1.tif
  • A portrait of a young Chinese woman.
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  • A small boy in typical infant split pants urinates from a woman's lap.
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  • A woman with a huge mohawk on a cell phone at the Midi Music Festival.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176474.JPG
  • The Chinese food culture has been finely tuned for 3,000 years, but some are more effected than others from the influence of a western food culture.  <br />
<br />
When a steady diet of junk food is consumed over time, many Chinese become overweight which is unlike traditional Chinese practicing customary Chinese eating habits.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176408.TIF
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