History lover uses camera to save abandoned historical sites

The dilapidated buildings in the villages of North China's Shanxi province appear to have no future. But to Tang Dahua, 48, they are "dying friends", and he wants to save them.

His photos tell their stories: an old temple is now a sheepfold hemmed in by piles of dung; an ancestral hall is overrun with weeds; a centuries-old wooden pagoda rots away; a collapsed theater has only three walls standing; frescoes in a damaged temple are heavily eroded.

Some are listed as cultural relics at the county level, but some are unknown even to locals.