Book on the country's last monkey trainers

Photographer Ma Hongjie with two monkeys. He documented the lives of people who train monkeys for roadside performances. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Chinese photographer Ma Hongjie traveled across China for more than a decade documenting the lives of people who train monkeys for roadside shows, once a popular form of entertainment in China, but now on the decline.

People used to watch monkeys perform tricks and paid their trainers, not just in China but also in other parts of the world.

Today, aside from a few surviving circuses, people are shunning animal shows everywhere. In China, urban management authorities mostly forbid monkey trainers from using public areas for the purpose, and sometimes even fine them heavily.

In 2001, Ma, 52, decided to follow a group of trainers from Xinye county, Nanyang city, in Central China's Henan province, to take their photos.

He had earlier seen some monkeys perform in the street, and he tracked the trainers down to their hometown, where people had been engaged in training the animals for generations.

When he took their pictures, Ma persuaded the trainers to tell him their stories. The project was originally intended to be a photo album. But after 12 years on the road with the group, he felt a strong desire to add a lot of text to explain his photos, and so the book, The Last Monkey Trainers, was published earlier this year.

The book tells of the joy and sorrow of those engaged in a fast disappearing trade.

"For people living in big cities, it is difficult to imagine the life of the unprivileged. But when you are there you realize they are similar to you," Ma said at a recent Beijing event for his book.