Picture in your mind a Chinese woman – maybe a silken-draped concubine with bound feet tottering shyly along the street or a Chairman Mao-capped figure labouring in the communist fields?

Now forget all those images because these are about as fitting in the modern day Chinese capital as a bonneted maid carrying milk churns across the West End of London or Elizabeth I hanging out in a studio flat in Leeds.

The young generation of females growing up in Beijing is not the subjugated race the liberated women of the West have been brought up to believe. They are aspiring celebrity-seeking stars, creative thinkers, management professionals and entrepreneurs. And they have retained a traditional responsibility to their family which we seem to have lost.

These modern-day women have been captured on camera by Ilkley photographer Laura Mate.

Born in London, Laura moved to Ilkley at the age of 13 and attended Ilkley Grammar School. After studying art and photography in Leeds and Bradford, she was tempted back to the capital to work as a freelance and photographer’s assistant. But it was an Ilkley link which was to make her embark on her journey to the East.

The owner of Ilkley’s Po Sang Chinese restaurant asked Laura to travel to China to help open an English tea room and, of course, provide photographs for the walls.

Unfamiliar with the Chinese culture, Laura was blown away by the inspiring youth she encountered and immediately returned to re-start her career.

She found herself sharing a flat with three Chinese girls, with no job and no Mandarin language skills. But she soon immersed herself in the flourishing underground arts scene, winning photographic commissions with Elle and Rolling Stone magazines.

“I just found there were so many creative women,” she said. “I kept meeting these incredible women who were so ambitious, so confident, so powerful. Beijing was like this little bud opening up. It was changing.

“Everything was happening in a flash. Everyone was dreaming of making it as a business-woman, it was like living in the 80s.”

It was not just the influx of Western influence such as designer labels and shopping malls changing women’s lives, but the tough choices of the generation before which helped mould their independence.

Women had been given a head-start by the Maoist regime – they had the chance to work alongside men for the common good, a chance to be more ‘equal’.

But importantly, Laura was born in 1979 – the year that Chinese communism introduced the policy of one family, one child. She found that most, if not all, her peers had no siblings and were therefore the only focus of family attention and the only hope of financial return.

They were to benefit from huge investment in their education and upbringing, but they were expected to continue the tradition of looking after their parents in their old age.

“These girls did have a lot of opportunities, all the money would be for them,”said Laura. “But they were really pressured. The parents wanted their only child to be happy but also to succeed.

“They would also be expected to look after their parents when they were old. The mother and father wanted to secure their pension from their kid.”

The collection of photographs – called Half the Sky after Mao Tse-Tung’s refrain “ban bian tian”, which means “women hold up half the sky” – is pref-aced by an extraordinary map which shows how far young women are prepared to travel to seek their fortune in Beijing.

Among the subjects photographed is restaurant worker Qin Linfang, who has only seen her six-year-old son once in last three years. While she is saving hard, he is being cared for by her grandparents in her home town in Sichuan.

Store owners have also tried to pave their own way, such as newspaper seller Duan Xuying, who had never seen a foreigner until she came to Beijing ten years ago and was only joined by her daughter five years ago from Guizhou.

Perhaps more surprising though are the young women running their own bars and clubs in their mid-20s. Petite Chang Lixin may look like an awkward teenager cowering in a corner of graffiti, but she is the proprietor of a large rock venue. She gets up at 8.30am to give children piano lessons before working into the night at the club, where she also sleeps.

Not far away, 27-year-old animation student Qi Jing runs a successful Belgian bar, perhaps catering for the likes of Ding Na, from the province of Shaxi, who arrived in Beijing to study mechanical engineering at the age of 18.

By day she works for a large automation company, but by night she is a party girl. Her dream is to complete her master's degree in Europe or the USA, have her own entertainment company and be a su-cessful actress in Hollywood.

Staring into the camera, some of the faces of these women come across as defiant and sullen, not unlike those you would find in a snapshot of UK youth.

But as well as glitz and glamour, there is honesty, hard work and hope.

They are a reflection of the troubled nature of many Chinese women, torn by need to balance the traditional ethic of family and work while following the capitalist rules of the West.

Perhaps artist Dong Dong can best illustrate the clash of cultural identities with her vibrant red sculpture — a Buddha-faced figure carrying a plastic green shopping basket, the desire for inner peace versus the capitalist influence of the West.

Her time in China has obviously had a huge impact on Laura.

The only reason she left was to join fiancé Ahmed, a French laywer, in Paris, where she now lives with her four-month-old son Mylan.

Her book is on sale in the Pompidou Centre in Paris and she has exhibitions coming up in some of the French capital’s galleries.

But with a photographic record of women she met, can look back on her time in China with inspiration and joy.

“I found their stories equally fascinating, whether they were planning business empires or waiting on tables,” she says.

“I wanted to honour this generation of women and tell the stories of young girls who had shown terrific courage in mak-ing truly epic journeys from rural provinces to seek their fortunes in one of the world’s most dynamic, pulsating capital cities.”

Half the Sky is on sale at The Tamara Lawson Gallery, Leeds Road, Ilkley, and Cakewalk, Railway Road, Ilkley, priced £20. For more information, visit lauramate. com.