This week we are featuring a photograph from the Vietnamese border with China by Kevin German, who is based in Vietnam.

 

My second trip to Vietnam was a magical one.  It was August of 2007 and I was traveling from the South all the way to the Northern Chinese boarder.  It was in the North where I first fell in love with the tourist town of Sapa and the area that surrounds it.  The air was so clean I felt like I was breathing into a bottle of Evian water.  Rain would come and go but the $0.80 green poncho I had bought did a fine job of keeping my body and camera gear dry.  I kept driving further south through the mountain range.  Every turn unveiled a new setting more impressive than the last.  For this particular image, the two boys were playing in a field while the water buffalo grazed.  They were sword fighting with the long sticks they use to hit the beasts when they do not obey commands.  I immediately name the boy with the blue poncho wrapped like a cape the Vietnamese Fisher King.  I stayed with them photographing as the scene played out.  When they were finished, they hopped back on the buffalo and rode them home to their minority village.