Regrets of a lost youth

Soon after Pang Youxiong arrived in Shifeng, the tiny village where he would spend the next three years of his life learning how to plant rice and vegetables and chop wood, he fell ill and had to leave. "For a long time I was in poor health and emotionally bruised. I had a lot of pain," Pang says.

He spent weeks in a hospital in Guiyang, the provincial capital of Guizhou province, before he returned to Shifeng, frail and exhausted, to work alongside the farmers who became his countryside family.

He struggled to keep up with the five other members on his work team. Carrying heavy bags of rice over mountainous roads to the commune was hard. He often fell behind.