Most of the way up the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, which rises to a height of more than eighteen thousand feet, in southwestern China’s Yunnan Province, there is a large alpine field called Yunshanping, or Spruce Meadow, where tourists gather to take photographs. Many of the visitors are couples about to get married. They wear traditional Western wedding clothing, the bride in white and the groom in black, and they are often accompanied by a team of several people. There are photographers and lighting assistants and makeup artists, with each set of professionals clustered around the couple. In October, 2024, when the British photographer Catherine Hyland first travelled to Spruce Meadow, she spent a day documenting the scene. “I found myself surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of brides and grooms,” she told me. “It was the first time I’d seen that many brides in one place.”
