An old craft revisited

Four naked boat trackers bend and drag the halter through their backs along the Shennongxi Stream in Badong county of Hubei province, on March 26, 2010. According to the local tourism bureau, the revival of the human landscape can help revive local culture and boost tourism. The boatmen were said to be living fossils of the hundreds-year-old boat-tracking culture in the Three Gorges region. In the old days, they worked in the nude, as clothes were made of coarse fabric that chafed in the water and injured their skin. But as the Three Gorges dam project got going in the 2000s, the culture has disappeared.[Photo/CFP]