A wizened farmer leads a buffalo through a misty copse of gnarled trees in eastern China, closely followed by a woman in a straw hat heaving pails of water.
It is a tranquil image of rural Chinese life – except for the overhead whirr of a drone, the hiss of a smoke machine and the excited chatter of smartphone-wielding day trippers.
Residents in Xiapu county, Fujian province, have achieved viral online fame by staging picturesque country scenes and charging tourists up to 300 yuan (about US$40) to photograph them.
By doing so, they indulge visitors’ nostalgia for a pastoral idyll that has been swept away by rampant urbanisation and industrial development – assuming it ever truly existed at all.
One visitor is Liang Liuling, 72, on holiday from the southwestern Guangxi region.
