A traditional Chinese dragon boat sits in the frozen Yichun river in Yichun, Heilongjiang province. Yichun was once known as China’s forestry capital, but decades of over-logging put the city on China’s first “resource-exhausted cities” list, published in 2008. A countrywide logging ban further accelerated Yichun’s economic downturn. Today, its government hopes to use tourism to boost the economy.

Two junior high school students smoke outside their school in Fularji, Heilongjiang province. Fularji once had a college specialising in heavy machinery, but the school moved to Qinhuangdao, Hebei province, which is closer to Beijing, in the 1990s further limiting opportunities for the city’s young people.

Yuting, 10, stands on the bank of the Hun River with a bouquet of artificial flowers for decorating ice sculptures, Fushun.

Lin Zi, 14, sits in a café where internet celebrities live stream performances online in Fularji. After dropping out of school, he began performing online and gained almost a million fans. “My parents abandoned me, and I make money by doing drag shows on a live streaming app,” he says.

Ai Ling, a 19-year-old athlete in Longjing, China says, “I’m a volleyball player at my university, and I don’t want to leave my hometown.”

Red-crowned cranes are painted in a mural in Fularji’s train station. The city is known as home to the cranes, a symbol of luck and longevity in Chinese culture.

Five Korean children pray in a local church in Longjing, Jilin province, China in 2017. Bordering North Korea, Longjing is home to a large ethnic Korean community.