The cowboys (and Indians) of Sichuan: photographers go in search of China's Billy the Kid
Photographers Stephanie Borcard and Nicolas Metraux go in search of a Chinese Billy the Kid in a remote Tibetan region
While travelling through the high plateau of the Tibetan part of Sichuan and Qinghai provinces, Swiss photographers Stephanie Borcard and Nicolas Metraux wanted to portray the Tibetans they encountered in a unique way.
Tagong, a small town at an altitude of 3,700 metres in the vast, pristine grasslands of southwestern Sichuan, proved to be an ideal backdrop. Like a town in a Wild West movie, its dusty central road is flanked by stores, pool halls and restaurants. Its people, moreover, with their large Stetson-like hats, whips and boots, resemble no one so much as the cowboys and Indians of North American history.
Hitchhiking through the region, on the back of pick-ups, police jeeps and vegetable trucks, the intrepid photographers passed through Manigango, Aba and Litang until, in Serxu, at the northernmost tip of Sichuan province, they finally found their Billy the Kid, proudly showing off his AK-47, a weapon used to start horse races rather than in anger.
Every summer, as in other counties on the plateau, Tibetans meet in Serxu to celebrate a horse-racing festival, an event that sees boys aged between 10 and 15 gallop bareback for 15km across a grassy plain.
