Wang Qiang sits in one of his hand-built light aircraft near his home in Cixi, Zhejiang province. The 41-year-old could not explain why he was so compelled to build aircraft, but said flying is "my dream, my joy; it's pretty much my life.[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

"The article was about how some people in China were building their own aircraft," Xu tells China Daily via e-mail. "The images accompanying the article showed the most bizarrely designed airplanes. I was immediately fascinated by the rich imaginations of these people and the contrast between their romantic pursuit and their poor material existence."

Xu had spent most of her career photographing modern China, the country she left as a 15-year-old to move to the Netherlands, and she quickly decided to make the DIY aviators her next project.

However, as soon as she began her initial research for the project, Xu ran up against a daunting obstacle:How do you track down a group of farmers with no internet presence in a country of 1.4 billion people?

Faced with such a seemingly intractable problem, many people would have chosen quietly to concede defeat and move on. But much like the subjects she was seeking out, something drove Xu to take a leap of faith.

"I found some newspaper articles about them, what their names were and where they came from, and with this basic information I went to China," she says.

Armed with her list of names, Xu flew out to China in January 2015. Starting in southern Guangdong province, she threw herself into a gruelling, slightly frantic manhunt, travelling from village to village by train and juddering rural buses.