It was the time of World Cup four years ago. My parents, younger brother and I gathered in my apartment in Shanghai and watched the game together.

But everyone in the room knew the gathering was not only for the game but something else - the sickness my younger brother suffered. He had bone cancer and he would collapse any time. After months-long treatment in the hospital, he got the doctors' permission to stay home with medicine and an oxygen tent.

He died on July 15, 2002. The weather was hot and humid. The air-conditioner was running all day and all night long. About 3 a.m, he woke up, walked to the kitchen slowly and sat down beside the dinner table. He put his face between his hands. His eyes were closed, like he was meditating, no pain to leave this world.

I snuck back to my room, crabbed my Nikon F5 camera, came back to the kitchen and started click, click, click. ... I was afraid that the shutter sound might wake him up.

When the sun was rising, he was rushed to hospital and died seven hours after the photo was taken.

***

"It must be the fate that you become a photographer, "my mother said to me the day I told her I got a job at Wenhui Daily, a daily newspaper that had a circulation of 1,800,000 in late 1980s. She opened our family photo album and pointed to a 1-inch square sepia photo: It was me, 2 1/2 years old, holding a tripod. I don't have a memory of it.

It seemed my dream came true. My parents are very proud of me.

As a photographer I did numerous assignments for the newspaper, but somehow I barely took pictures of my family for years. Nobody asked me to do it, and I ignored it.

My brother worked as a copy editor assistant for a magazine. We got used to seeing our work in a paper and a magazine, but not in a family album.

When I turned my camera to my younger brother, I captured the moment with my beloved one. His image connects us forever.

If I didn't do it, who would? As a photojournalist, if I can't use my camera to tell the stories of people, who would?

After the loss of my brother, I started to feel something was heavy inside of me and it wouldn't go away. I looked at the photos I took for the newspaper and the photos were never published.

This photo was taken on a chilly, rainy morning in March 2001. I got a phone call from a friend who works in a fire department. He told me there was a construction accident at Minhang district, suburban Shanghai. Construction workers were buried inside.

I rushed to the street and caught a taxi to get there. There were few photographers at the scene. A rescue team worked in the field where 17 construction workers died. Their bodies were wrapped and moved down to the ground slowly. I called my editor and started shooting. More journalists kept coming. We spent hours shooting, and we saw one government official came and left.

On my way to newsroom, my cell phone rang. It was my editor, and he said that a fax from the government information office had just arrived. It said this accident shouldn't be in the newspaper the next day. The photo was buried, and the information was buried as well. The public didn't know what happened that morning. There was no information about the workers who died, and why.

My fury and frustration grew: It was unfair to the victims and the public. It was not the job that journalists are supposed to do. I felt the limitation in my work.

This picture is of an 11-year-old blind girl.

Fei-fei Fan, 11, was a legally blind softball player from Ji Nan, Shandong province, in China. She attended the Special Olympics in Shanghai, China, in 1998. Following the game, Shanghai Hospital offered her a free surgery to remove cataracts in her eyes. Afterward, she opened her eyes and saw the flowers in front of her bed. She cried out: "Flowers, flowers. "

The picture was in the newspaper the next day, but inside. We have so many images about conferences, politicians, public relations, public officials and economic development. Showing individual emotion is not valued in China.

But this photo got me into the School of Journalism at West Virginia University.

***

In July 2003, I attended an international professional exchange program at West Virginia University. I worked in the WVU School of Journalism for four months and gave a presentation of my work from China.

Before I left WVU to go back to China, dean Christine Martin, who is now a vice president for WVU, asked me if I wanted to study for a master's degree in journalism. The school offered me a graduate assistantship.

Martin later mentioned that she made the decision because of this photo. She could see my passion and commitment to journalism.

In July 2004, I asked for a leave of absence from the newspaper and came to the United States. I brought my younger brother's photo with me.

***

I hope in the end of the program, I know where I am and what I plan to do. If the readers can be touched a little bit - or, perhaps, as deeply as I am when I see that last image of my brother - I am satisfied.

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