All Along the Watchtower
12-oz Tsing Tao at the Great Wall of China
The popularization of his first work, "Great Leap Forward," turned Chao Kun Pai into a celebrity in his native China. He soon was granted an indefinite leave from his position at The People's Daily, and was told to roam the Chinese countryside in pursuit of photos that captured the changing mood of the nation.

Freed of Communist Party control, Kun Pai begins to spread his wings in this 1982 photo. The wall symbolizes the stifling constraints of the Mao era, while the Tsing Tao, striving skyward, represents the new time of individual liberty and personal growth.

But Kun Pai soon discovered that freedom can have its dark side. Drunk with both fame and lager, his behavior became more and more erratic, and he soon alienated even his staunchest allies in the reformist wing of the Communist Party.

The photographer went too far with a disastrous photo shoot at Mao's Tomb in 1984, when he attempted to place a glass of beer on the embalmed leader's forehead. The shoot was broken up by security police, Kun Pai was arrested, and after a show trial was sent to a labor camp in Manchuria. He was never seen again.