China - The Yunnan Chronicle

China is a world within a world, vast, layered, timeless. A land where mountains rise like ancient guardians, where villages hold centuries in their silence, and where the pace of life feels untouched by the noise of modernity.

I traveled across the country by train, foot, and instinct, moving from the calm of old towns to the dizzying cliffs of the Tiger Leaping Gorge.
Every day was a lesson in contrast:
the softness of the people,
the harshness of the landscapes,
the order of the cities,
the wildness of the mountains.

In China, nothing feels familiar, and that is precisely what makes everything transformative.

The Yunnan region, especially, felt like stepping into a parallel lifetime.
A place shaped by diversity, where cultures intertwine effortlessly, including the Hui Muslim communities I had the chance to meet.
Sharing moments with them, stepping into their neighborhoods, tasting their food, listening to their stories… brought me into a world within the world.
A quiet reminder that identity in China is never singular, and that spiritual warmth often hides in the most unexpected corners.

Streets paved with stone, wooden houses shaped by centuries, tea shared with strangers whose kindness needed no language.

And the mountains :
they stripped everything down to the essential.
Silence.
Breath.
Presence.
A raw encounter with nature that leaves no room for pretending.

These photographs are fragments of this journey,
moments of stillness, vertigo, humanity, cultural depth, and the quiet power of a country that changes you without ever trying to.