It was the local people's good-heartedness that helped Zhang and his friends survive the week until their car eventually came.

Zhang became fascinated by photography during his music studies at Minzu University of China in the early 1980s.

He often went to different places with his classmates to perform, and that was when he met Sun Chengyi, a fellow student who invited him on a two-week tour in Shandong province. "He had a Nikon camera that was really impressive, and more so were the photos he took with it," Zhang says.

The spark of Zhang's enthusiasm toward photography had caught aflame.

After his graduation in 1983, Zhang got a job with the art division of Gansu's ethnic affairs committee. The position exposed him to a rich ethnic culture in neighboring provinces such as Qinghai, Sichuan, and the Tibet autonomous region. He founded the Gansu Folk Custom magazine later that year.