China is experiencing dramatic economic and social change. Though its economy has slowed in recent years, it averaged double-digit annual growth for more than a generation. Engineers have built the world's largest dam, harnessing the Yangtze River, and the world's longest high-speed rail line, linking Beijing and Shanghai. Some 44,000 feet of skyscrapers were built in the last year alone. Change can be seen everywhere, especially on the 9,000 miles of shoreline where this remarkable growth began. Zhang Xiao examines this evolution in his series Coastline.

Under the economic and social reforms Deng Xiaoping ushered in during the 1970s, the entire coastline eventually became a Special Economic Zone, exempt from taxes and regulation—the so-called "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics." This gave rise to the mighty economic and industrial centers that are driving the country's growth. "People flooded into the city from their hometowns to let a small fishing village become a metropolis with millions of residents,” said Xiao, who lives in Chengdu. "There are miracles of a rapidly growing economy here every day, but we're not sure whether it is better or worse, as we made these miracles by losing our tradition and history."

Coastline , Jiazazhi Press, 2014.

Coastline, released as a photo book, doesn't offer the typical view of China. You won't see photos of Beijing enveloped in smog, throngs of riders packed into subways, or megacities towering over tiny villages. Xiao instead focused on where land meets sea. There, he found teeming crowds on packed beaches, but also scenes of unexpected calm and solitude.

Xiao spent four years exploring the coastline, wandering from the mouth of the Yalu River in Liaoning Province south to the mouth of Beilun River in Guangxi Province. Prior to the project, he had been a photojournalist with the China Morning Post, and his photos retain an intimate documentary quality.

“I just walked along the coast in China, and these scenes would break into your line of sight,” he said. “When I came to a place, usually I would buy a local map and then just walk along the map all the day.” He didn't set out to see anything in particular; he traced a path on the coastal margin and waited for scenes to emerge.

The photographer grew up not far from the coast, but rarely got to visit. "I’ve longed for the sea since my childhood," said Xiao. "But my family couldn’t afford the travel." Like gauzy memories, the images Xiao created have a dreamy, otherworldly quality full of soft light and consuming sky.

Xiao says there’s a strange sameness to the Chinese coastline—so much so that naming a favorite spot for him is impossible. "Many cities are homogenized under China's economic development," he said. "So I often find things familiar even when I wake up in a strange city. In the development process, most cities lose their own characteristics. Only in this way will they develop rapidly."