'I don't know whether it's [Richard] Nixon serving Tsingtao beer or [Mikhail] Gorbachev resigning,' says Liu Heung Shing, trying to decide which opportunity pleased him the most. 'I have always had people asking, 'Liu, where is your camera?' 'Liu would you like to come?' and I have always said, 'Yes, yes, yes.''
Hong Kong-born Liu has had an unusual career, one that has included those two moments, which any photojournalist would have been thrilled to capture. The resulting images, dating from 1982 and 1991, respectively, were exclusive shots. The first earned him an autograph from the late American president and the second- as part of an Associated Press package- a prestigious Pulitzer Prize, the first and only one won by a Chinese photographer.
Recently, Liu completed the last of a trilogy of photography books; what he calls a 'collective visual memoir' about China. All three volumes were launched on stately occasions. The first, China: Portrait of a Country, covering 60 years of the People's Republic, was launched on the eve of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The second, Shanghai: A History in Photographs, 1842 - Today, went into print for the 2010 World Expo. And the latest, China in Revolution: Nineteen-Eleven and Beyond 1911, commemorates the centenary of the 1911 revolution, which ended the Qing dynasty and ushered in the first republic of Asia.
Liu says the conception of the trilogy project was 'accidental', having happened 'over some beers at the top of a hotel near Tiananmen Square, overlooking hundreds of thousands of people taking to Changan Avenue celebrating [the success of] Beijing's 2008 Olympic bid'.
'As a media person, I am constantly on the watch for story ideas. Many stories need a timely opportunity for a great narrative. For me, the opportunity arose in 2008, when people from all over the world, including Chinese, came to Beijing for the Olympics.
'Chinese people have come a long way in the past 60 years and the amount of detail in those years is enormous. Yet among all Western and Chinese photo accounts, I have not seen one that tells of the China I know. I felt I needed to tell the story through a visual history.'
For 4 1/2 years, Liu collected images, sticking to shots taken by Chinese photographers.