Women play a major role in a new course.

Story and photographs by John Johnson

HUNDREDS of years before anyone with a penchant for golf set foot upon the soil of the Monterey Peninsula and envisioned Pebble Beach, there was a viable fishing community by that name on the shores of northeast China. Now, nearly 80 years after the opening of the famed American golf course, hundreds of workers are preparing one of China's most impressive layouts, Golden Pebble Beach.

The new course comes by its name quite honestly -- it is a direct translation of Jinshitan, the small fishing community beside which California-based architect Peter Thompson has sketched his layout. The course is in an economic free zone outside Dalian. Like its American counterpart, the Chinese course features striking cliffside and beachfront vistas; both are among the finest tributes to golf ever constructed.

This was my second trip to China, the first coming 10 years ago. As primarily a landscape photographer I found my focus was instead on the people and cultural diversity in this dramatic land. There were about 400 laborers on site -- most of them women, including the supervisors -- and much work was done by hand. We're talking two-person teams, one swinging a pick to bust rock, the other to shovel it out. The supervisor, Ren Shu Juan, a young woman, presided over all phases of construction.

While I never observed a formalized break, workers occasionally could be seen leaning on shovels or picks. Eventually I recognized their rhythm: one worker rested while her teammate labored, then they shifted roles. Workers were given a significant midday break, maybe 90 minutes, not unlike a siesta, to punctuate their 12-hour days on site.

The evening before I departed I sat out on a point near a small pagoda, waiting for the light of sunset. I could see Thompson, making his last notations on drawings, as a truckload of workers drove by and waved. Most of them had no idea who he was or what they were even building, as they had never seen a course. Yet they are all happy, Peter with his charts and project, and they with their work. They are preparing a world-class facility in a land on the doorstep of entering a new dimension.