Adriana is treated for malnutrition in Baucau, Timor-Leste

Adriana has her arm circumference measured at a community health outreach session
©UNICEF/China/2025/Lu Yufan

It’s a hot, dry and dusty afternoon in Bulubai village, in Baucau,Timor-Leste, when a team of health and nutrition workers arrives from the nearby Laga Health Centre. The community has turned out to welcome them. A group of women, children and older people sit on plastic chairs in the shade of a metal roof, surrounded by small village houses. The activities begin with a demonstration of how to cook nutritious meals with locally available ingredients, led by Ana Legita Correia, a local woman from the village, who is also a member of the mothers’ support group.

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Nonia’s school prepares for climate disasters in Timor-Leste

Nonia listens to a class on family history at Casnafar Basic Education Branch School
© UNICEF China/2025/Lu Yufan

It was a stormy evening when the worst flood in recent memory hit the outskirts of Dili, Timor-Leste. Flood waters swept down the hillside of a steep valley, engulfing Casnafar Basic Education Branch School and houses in nearby villages. People living in the area are used to annual flooding, but this was much worse than usual. They quickly abandoned their belongings and homes and climbed the hillside to find higher ground.

Before the night was over, the water had risen above the metal roof of the school buildings. Many family homes were either swept away or damaged beyond repair. The school buildings, which were stronger, survived but everything inside was swept away. When teachers returned, they found classrooms full of stone and sand left behind by the retreating flood waters. It was another two months before students were able to return to school.

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Beijing’s historic hutongs (part two)

A flock of birds fly over the Bell Tower in the heart of old Beijing.
© Andrew Brown/2025/China

This year, I’ve continued to explore Beijing’s historic hutongs. My first photo walk of the year was in May, with some friends from work. We started early at the Bell and Drum Towers, which were used in imperial times to announce the time of day. From the towers, we explored the narrow side streets, looking for interesting details of local life. Although this can be a busy tourist area later in the day, at 8am on a Sunday morning the square between the two towers is mainly used by local people for exercise. We saw groups of older people practicing tai chi, some of them in traditional costumes and armed with fencing swords or spears. Others performed a colourful ribbon dance, swirling long strips of fabric around in time to Chinese pop music from a portable stereo.

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Lifen promotes recycling to protect nature

Huang Lifen draws a picture on the beach at Chengmai, Hainan Island.
© UNICEF/China/2025/Ma Yuyuan

Early in the morning, 18-year-old graphic design student Huang Lifen walks down a beach at Chengmai on the north coast of Hainan Island, China, with a sketchpad under her arm. The sound of the waves can be heard, rolling gently to the shore. It’s a beautiful sweep of sand but, as she looks out to sea, the horizon is lost in the haze. Lifen walks towards the top of the beach, where she starts finding rubbish left behind by tourists the day before or washed up from the sea.

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Cao Kun saves water to help protect the planet

Cao Kun adjusts a passion fruit vine on the trellis he made from recycled bed frames.
©UNICEF/China/2025/Ma Yuyuan

Cao Kun walks up the hillside from a small lake to his family farm in Chengmai, a rural area of China’s southern Hainan Island. It’s sunset and the air is filled with the sounds of birds and crickets. A white egret flies across the sky from the marshland. Cao Kun pushes aside the leaves of a tall maize plant and follows the winding earth path in the fading light. He turns to look back across the valley.

“When I was a boy, this lake was much larger and had lots of fish in it,” he recalls. “But there was a very severe drought a few years ago. The lake became so dry that only the central part had some water left. The mud at the bottom of the lake dried up and cracked because of the sun.”

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Yeming overcomes bullying, thanks to mental health lessons

Yeming, (left) 13, plays with her friend Jinghao at Zhangqiu No 4 High School, Shandong.
©UNICEF/China/2024/Zhang Yuwei

Thirteen-year-old Yeming stands on her own by the window of an empty classroom at Zhangqiu No 4 High School, Shandong. She looks out across the vast school campus, which hosts 9,900 students in huge red-brick buildings. She watches other students walking between yellowing trees beneath her, their footsteps echoing, towards a lake in the centre of campus. It is autumn but unusually cold and windy, and many of the children wear padded jackets over their uniforms.

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Zihan rebuilds her mental health with help from a peer supporter

Zhu Zihan (right) with peer supporter Wenhao at Zhangqiu No 4 High School.
© UNICEF China/2024/Zhang Yuwei

After a long day at school, Zhu Zihan, 17, returns to her family home in an ordinary apartment building in Zhangqiu, Shandong Province. She climbs the plain concrete stairs to the sixth floor and knocks on the last door. Her father, Zhu Chulin, welcomes her. It’s a bitingly cold autumn evening but warm and cosy inside. The small apartment is decorated with paintings of lotus flowers and red Chinese characters for good luck. Soft toys from Zihan’s early childhood, including the purple starfish from Spongebob, still sit along the back of the sofa.

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Photos: Beijing’s historic hutongs

A classic hutong scene: these red doors and lion-head doorknockers are widespread. People often leave the doors open, allowing you to glimpse the communal courtyard houses inside.
© Andrew Brown/2024/China

My favourite place to photograph in Beijing is the historic hutongs (alleyways) in the old town. Originally built by the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty in the Thirteenth Century, these narrow passages are filled with stone and tiled courtyard houses that once housed servants of the imperial palace and their families. Plain grey brick walls are interspersed with bright red doors with grinning lion head knockers and banners with good luck sayings on them in elegantly-painted Chinese characters. Behind these are courtyard houses, where several families or generations live communally. In the summer, older men hang around the doorways with their t-shirts rolled up over their stomachs in the so-called “Beijing bikini”, while brightly coloured birds chirp from overhead cages, hung below the eaves of houses.

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Wenfeng gets the best start in life

Xiuxiang plays with Wenfeng in the fields outside the family home
© UNICEF China/2024/Ma Yuyuan

How UNICEF is helping rural caregivers in China with early childhood development

A cow bell clanks gently in the otherwise still and quiet morning on a ridge high above Tongjiang river, Sichuan Province. The hillside is sculpted into terraces where farmers grow rice, wheat and potatoes. An older woman, Li Xiuxiang, walks down the terraces towards the clanking cow, past ancestral gravestones. On her back is a small boy, her grandson Wenfeng, who is one and a half years old. He is alert and curious, smiling and pointing at things as they pass.

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Thanva recovers from malnutrition

Thanva plays with a fan at Thongkang Health Centre, while his mother Bouanang looks on
© UNICEF China/2024/Andrew Brown

How UNICEF and China are supporting malnourished children in Laos

It’s a hot morning towards the end of the dry season in Nan District, Laos, when Bouanang brings her son Thanva to Thongkang Health Centre for a check-up. Small trucks called tok-toks drive past, with people or farm produce in the back. The sound of cockerels crowing is interspersed with the noise of chainsaws and there is a faint tang of smoke in the air. Further down the road, a farmer is burning a field in preparation for planting casava, ahead of the expected rainy season. There should be an impressive view across the valley to the hills opposite, but the mountains are wreathed in smog due to slash-and-burn agriculture, and the far ridge is a faintly sketched outline against an unnaturally grey sky.

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