‘Have duck will travel', is perhaps not a commonly heard phrase but one I feel appropriate for today's photo.
I'm thinking we must have been on a boat ourselves but I don't recall that much detail from 1991. I do know from the surrounding images that we were still in Suzhou.
There's just so much happening in this photo. The duck standing on the deck just seems to me to complete the scene. It looks, at 100%, as though it's tethered to the boat by its right leg. A pet or a meal – perhaps both?
The boat is loaded with coal. Anyone who's seen the recent smog images from China will know that coal is a huge part of that country's energy mix. With a good two inches of freeboard left, I think they could have squeezed more on. I'm guessing there's no Plimsoll Mark and the load is managed by eyeballing the freeboard.
But, seriously, the wakes from passing boats are already splashing water on the deck and my guess is that it leaks through holes in the rusted steel to find its way into the bilges. Hopefully the bilge pump works.
The wheelhouse, like the boat, has seen better days with all the original glass gone. Indeed, the whole aft structure seems an afterthought. The horizontal bar that runs behind the girl is the tiller – there isn't a wheel here, just a simple tiller to direct the rudder. The long bamboo pole leaned against the roof is what the boatman uses to push his boat away from the wharf and into the stream.
