The outlook wasn't too promising for Wang Zheng as a boy. Born in 1962 in the heart of the poor Xihaigu region of the Ningxia Hui autonomous region, he was the youngest of five children.

"Spoiled, I grew up as a bad, arrogant and domineering young boy," he says.

But Wang, one of China's top documentary photographers and critics, managed to channel his boyish enthusiasm in directions that would take him far.