Tales from a Chinese Studio

Few pieces of furniture in the Chinese house are as immediately tactile as the kang-style bed, sending heat to its capacious surface from the embers of coal briquettes. A staple of northeastern homes for centuries, it is a dining area, a bench for private consolation and a warm place to wake up in everyday. The kang is the architectural centerpiece of the traditional rural home, in an otherwise spare structure, and the focus of photographer Gilles Sabrie's latest series.