China Span was founded by Keren Su in 1987 and is engaged mainly in two business: photo stock agency providing professional services to the advertising and publishing industry; offering small, intimate trips to China and other international destinations.

China Span, as a photo stock agency, specializes in photos of China and has the best coverage in almost every aspect of life there, including the wild life, the natural landscape, the various peoples, the culture, the architecture and the cityscape. With an extensive collection of more than 200,000 images, China Span offers professional, high-quality services.

China Span has been leading special tours to photograph China's endangered wildlife and its picturesque landscapes. China Span also organizes small, intimate cultural tours to China and other Asian countries. On these trips you can witness every day life, both in the cities and in the remote unspoiled countryside where life goes on as it has for centuries. You will get to know the highlights of this ancient civilization, participate in traditional activities, and find out what is really going on in these emerging countries. You will find the experience of traveling to these exotic parts not only entertaining but culturally rewarding and educational.

ABOUT KEREN SU

Keren Su is a self-taught Chinese photographer, painter, adventurer and culture explorer. He is living proof of the Chinese adage that says one must travel thousands of miles and read thousands of books before speaking with the weight of authority.

In China, Keren is known for three firsts: he is the first person to ride a one gear bicycle across China, to motorbike around China and to raft with a self-made innertube raft down the Tarim River - the world's longest interior river.

Keren was born in the picturesque coastal city Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province in China. During the disastrous Cultural Revolution, he was separated from his family and sent to a distant labor camp in China's northeast region. He was not the only one in his family to suffer pain. His father, a professor in Classical Chinese Literature was jailed for seven years for the essays he wrote that hinted things against the government.

After returning from the fields at the end of the Cultural Revolution Keren continued with his education and graduated from the Hangzhou Teacher's Institute in 1981. He set out to cross China on a bicycle. Beginning in Hangzhou and ending 57 days later in Urumqi in Xinjiang Province. His solo trip carried him 3000 miles, through eight provinces and autonomous regions. The journey was an education in itself. Along the way he met bee keepers, cotton bluffers and boat rowers. He sipped sweet wine with northern Shanxi farmers in the field, ate potatoes with Gansu peasants in a cave and drank yak butter tea with Tibetans in a felt yurt on the Qinghai plateau. He took photographs, sketched pictures, recorded conversations and wrote poems.

While some might be content to stay in place after such a journey, Keren's trip nourished the adventure in him. He then traveled over 12,000 miles of China's southern province borders on a motorcycle, entering regions so remote that many of the inhabitants had never before seen mechanized means of transportation.

During the summer of 1987 Keren organized and headed the first rafting expedition down the world's longest interior river, the Tarim (Tali Mu). With characteristic ingenuity, he fabricated rafts for the adventure from gigantic inner tubes lashed together with hand-braided plastic rope. Their progress was followed closely by the news media and Keren and his team became heroes among the Chinese.

As a mountain guide for the China Mountaineering Association, he guided many trekking and climbing teams to Mt. Everest, K2, the Pamir Plateau and many remote areas in China. Because of his extensive mountaineering experience Keren was named coordinator and worked for the 1990 Peace Expedition to Mt. Everest. Comprised of mountain climbers from the United States, the Soviet Union and China, this was the first international expedition to Mt. Everest for those three countries. On less rigorous adventures, Keren guided many photographers and people to remote areas of China.

As a result of his intensive travel in China, Keren has published written and photographic accounts of the lives of Chinese minority people, their folk art and customs, capturing glimpses of many never-before-seen parts of the land and the people who live there. Numerous awards have been bestowed on him for his photography of people and nature. He has been honored by membership in the Chinese photography Association and the Silk Road fine Art Academy. His story were carried on many news papers and magazines including the Washington Post. He has published his photo books of panda, Siberian tiger in USA, Japan and China. His photos were used worldwide by magazines such as National Geographic Traveler, Smithsonian, Forbes, etc.

Keren is also known for his painting talents. Encouraged in the arts since childhood when he first learned calligraphy, he is an accomplished sumi artist who recently developed a new style of this ink on rice paper painting. Keren's art has been exhibited widely through out the United States, including Seattle's Fry Art museum , Twin Cranes Gallery and Harrison Gallery in Seattle Culture Center.

Keren first came to the United States at the end of 1987 when he toured coast to coast with his slide presentations and art exhibitions. Currently he lives in the Seattle area where he devotes his time to photography, painting and putting together his "special tours" to China. As the founder of China Span, in 1990, he worked on the board of Peace Expedition to Mt. Everest with Americans, Soviets and Tibetans. He went to China very often for taking pictures all along the roof of the world on the Himalayas, Pamir Plateau and Silk Road and all places in remote area of China. In 1993, he was very successful in having the first American team hike along the Great Wall in China. Keren has been photographing the panda for over ten years and he has a wide variety of panda slides in different seasons and different environments. He also leads special photo tours to photograph the panda.

His unique slide shows about China are welcomed by many people on both coasts in the United States which not only widens the vision of China for western people but also for the Chinese themselves. Keren's images of China are represented in the United States by photographic stock agencies, such as Tony Stone, FPG, Corbis, and in other countries like Japan, Germany, England, etc.

He continues to present slide shows and art exhibits in the United States, and leads small intimate culture and photo tours to China and other Asian countries.