After 5 hours flight from Jakarta to Guangzhou, 3 hours in transit, and another 2 hours flight, I was in Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan province, China, for the Awarding Ceremony of Humanity Photo Award 2011. As previously written in this post, I won both Nomination Award and Documentary Awards for my Mentawai works and Pacu Jawi series. The Pacu Jawi went to the final evaluation round, competing for the Grand Award.

The organizer decision to choose Kunming as the place for the ceremony is just perfect. Like everywhere else in China, it's developing. Construction sites are everywhere. Building a new landmark for modern day China: The Great Concrete Wall.

The place where I stayed, Green Lake View Hotel was located at the city center. As the name suggest, the Green Lake, Kunming natural landmark was within a stone throw. In short, this was the great place to hang around.

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Being invited to the HPA 2011 awarding ceremony allowed me to meet many great talents. There are notable amount of invited photographers coming from Bangladesh, Italy, China, Myanmar, Iran, Vietnam, Spain, Indonesia, Malaysia, Rumania, Serbia, India, Chile, and etc. My fellow Indonesian were Andi Sucirta and Aulia Erlangga.

The exhibition which held for a week in Kunming Library was stunning (will post the picture later). Great works from all over the world were hanging on the wall. Many of them were the pictures that I wish I was the one who took it. Inspiring.

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Finally, the 6 Grand Award winners was announced. The Pacu Jawi won the Festival Category :)  Again, by seeing the amount of great works exhibited, I really considered myself very lucky to become one of them. For me, It seemed that everyone that night deserve to win.

Now, all invited photographers are going around Yunnan province. I posted this from Lincang county, close to Myanmar's border. More update later. The bus is waiting :)

P.S: Please don't ask me the reason why I put the picture of a security guard for this post :P