During the course of my time here in China, I've had the chance to snap quite a number of different pictures, of the area around where I live. It's a very dynamic area, full of contrasts.

The Chinese people are fascinating but yet troubling. In many ways what I see here gives credence to China still being a developing nation, but with a government that has is getting such a huge windfall from exports, how can such disparity be supported ?

Everyday, walking to work, weather permitting, there's this guy or one of his mates sitting on the pavement playing his instrument, busking.

The next chap popped out as being fascinated with me and the camera, as I looked for photos while walking along. My surprise came when he up and posed for a picture. Very un-Chinese like.

Wherever there are more than two Chinese men with time on their hands (and nothing else to do), you will find them playing cards or checkers. The lengths with which they'll go to in order to play checkers is in part illustrated by this photo, although I've seem much more primitive setups. These two gents were sitting in the shade on a hot day along the east side of the road leading up to the gate of Tsinghua University.

Cigarette breaks seem to be universal. It seems strange that you can smoke in the restaruante/cafe but the people who work there can't, if that's of any real comfort.

Tsinghua University is rated as one of the top universities in China, the equivalent of an MIT. It owns a substantial area of the city, including the site where the building I'm working is in. Having such a prosperous and well regarded institution doesn't seem to have the immediate flow on effects to all around. This photo was taken late in the evening of one of the hot days this summer. In retrospect, I should have done some fixing of the white balance.

Of course not all of the homeless(?) people sleep on the pavement, some use the more traditional park bench too.

In this picture, it isn't the people that got my attention, rather the ladder (and A-frame) against the buiding. I would have preferred it if the lady holding the ladder wasn't there, but they were very skittish about the whole thing when they noticed me.

This is one of the stranger scenes I've come across, 4 gents sitting on the kerb with "Reserve" signs on the road staking out their territory. I'm not exactly sure what made that section of the road so attractive - maybe you need to be Chinese to understand it.

A more traditional way to pass the time quietly is to go fishing and during the warmer months. When there's water in the canals and they're not frozen, there's the odd person or two sitting in the shade, pole out, waiting for a bite...

Wherever you go in Beijing, you see bikes. Bikes in numbers you'll never see anywhere else in the world. Unfortunately some in China think that bikes are a problem and cause traffic congestion. My observations are that this is not the case, rather its the lack of education of road users that is to blame. Nobody gives way, if they can help it, it's a struggle to assert yourself and make sure you get to where you're going, others be damned. So long as this attitude prevails, China will always have huge traffic problems. I've seen intersections packed with cars that are going nowhere because nobody has enough sense not to enter the intersection if they'll just block it for a cycle of lights or two.

Because bikes and cars mix on roads together, bike riders need to take some precautions - such as guarding your own face from dirt that gets kicked up by car tyres. The adopted solution is a bit of a different fashion accessory than what I've seen elsewhere but seems to be popular enough.

Hopefully a coming soon photo will be of the umbrella carrier on the back of the bike, shading both people...

Given that bikes are so cheap (an expensive bike is 200MB or more), the bike is used for transporting all manner of goods and in quantities that many of us would declare unsafe. The most impressive bike load I've ever seen to date is this collection of foam on top of cardboard.

This next load was just as bizarre - a full height 19 inch rack cabinet, sitting on the back of a bike. A few minutes later the guy passed me by, as he road off down the road.

Of course it's not always cargo that's in the back of the bike, often the bike is used as a taxi, whether it be for your friend, girlfriend or...I'm not sure what relationship this two had, would you take your mother in law around in the back like this ?

Unfortunately they don't always get their bike load correct and when that happens, its tail up and whoops! The bike in question here is of the three wheel variety.

However, rain, hail or shine, when the only transport you have to get around is your bike then everywhere you go, you've got to do it by bike. Sometimes the conditions are good and at others they can be a bit more adverse. The morning after a large downpour overnight a section of local road flooded. Did this stop anyone? Nope! The question seemed to be, how wet did you want your feet to get in making the crossing? Did anyone go around? Not many. There's no indication that it was flooded (and it isn't always after rain) until too late and between the kerb and the garden bit, once you've started, you're committed unless you decide to turn back.

At the end of the day, or in the middle of the day, when you've been working hard, sometimes you need to find a quiet place to rest. What better place than in or on the back of your bike ?

How many bikes are there in China? A LOT. In an attempt to get a feel for the number and put that in pictures, I ventured out one morning to capture the stream of bikes coming out of the university. Putting life and limb at risk, I snapped the following pictures.

What future does the bike have in China? How long will it take to become a past mode of transport? Hopefully it will never go out of vogue, or at least not in Beijing. They don't have a nearly good enough public transport infrastructure to support the number of people moving about by train or bus and the pollution from cars would just be horrendous. Having said that, I'm not convinced that the bike's days aren't numbered...

When I talk to people about Beijing, I often mention how bad the air is here. To try and illustrate how bad the air is here, I've assembled some photographs taken at various times of the day.

This first two were taken early in the morning. The first is an accurate representation of the colour of the day, in contrast to the second where I've underexposed to get a better red out of the Sun. But even then, it was not a problem to look through the camera lens, zoomed out, directly at the Sun and take the photo. That's not something I'd recommend doing anywhere.

Another way to get an idea of the air quality is to look at some shots showing distance, like these two down the road and train track.

And finally, to give an indication of the difference it makes, here's a pair of shots with roughly the same view. The second was taken at dusk, hence the not so great lighting, but for once the hills in the distance are visible. It is an exception to be able to see so far, not the rule.

Of course not all pollution is in the air, some of it is on the ground and some of it is in the water. If you think the river near you is badly polluted, you won't want to see what the waterways in Beijing are like. The picture below is of the same place the gentleman above was fishing.

Food in China is different. Different to Chinese food in any western country but you knew that, didn't you? Just as food varies around the world, so do drinking regulations. In the USA, you're not supposed to drink until you turn 21. However, in China, I suspect it's a bit different...

In the morning, breakfast is provided for construction workers by passing vendors. What is it they're selling? I'm not 100% sure. One morning I bought something...what I thought was something akin to a potatoe cake. It was actually more like baked batter with some kind of tasty bit in the middle. Not very apetitising. But they line up, pay .5RMB or maybe 1 for one of the larger items you see in the pictures, made then and there for them.

On walking to work, I nearly always pass this cake shop. On this occasion, I wanted to take a photo of what I see through the window. Don't pay attention to the girl on the right up close, or the reflection of the person in the window, but the change in the expression of the girl in the background.

When they're working normally in the window, this is what you can expect to see when walking by.

The inside of the cake shop that belongs to that window is filled with pastries of various varieties.

In many Chinese cafes/restaurants or places where they prepare food, some of the food is kept heated in wicker baskets kept outside. I've seen this all over the city.

So what is this photos doing in the food section? These animals are sold on the street, kept in small cages. It's not clear if the intended sale is meant to be as a pet or as food. Yes, dog appears on the menu in some places and the Chinese aren't adverse to eating puppies. But in this area, maybe I'm stretching it - there are lots of foreigners who come in and maybe just some of them long for a pet like at home? Who can say, I've not actually seen anyone buy one.

Out the window of my lounge room, looking down, is the top to a collection of cafes, bars, hair dressers, bakeries, etc. From time to time the top seems to serve a dual purpose. I've seen them up on top having cigarette breaks, hitting trash around like kids do with big sticks and then there have been these events that I've seen. The first looks like morning roll call with everyone being given their "orders" for the day. The other, well, who can't recognise a party when they see one?

Not everyone in the city lives on land, there appear to be some who live on the water too. I'm not sure where these people go when it gets cold or how they know when to leave, but this boat isn't there during the winter.

In the land opposite the building where I worked, a lot of construction work has been taking place up until very recently. The people that work there don't have to commute very far, they live on a part of the side adjacent to the building work. The conditions of these living quarters can be best described as squalid. It is bunk bed housing for the men, dormitory style. The bathroom, well, that's outside and judging by the smell, depending on what your bathroom requirements were had an impact on how far you travelled to do your business. Teeth were cleaned (if you cleaned them) at a tap providing some running water out the outer wall of the shared facilities. In the pictures below, the first is early morning, Sun about to rise and lights on as people wake up. The second shows the buildings during the day and in the foreground is a pile of rubbish. There are no garbage trucks servicing these buildings, all of their rubbish just piles up outside, adding its own fragrance to the air. I've learnt to hold my breath when walking by. The advantage of having such cheap housing is that when you're finished with it, you just bulldoze it - the third picture is what the same place looks like today. No more tin roofs being hold on by bricks or plasterboard walls. The last photo is some makeshift living area. This may have been people involved in another part of the construction. There were people living like this, working at the site, from quite early on, when it was cold.

My journey around the are on foot has found some other interesting settings that I thought might be of interest to others. The pandas and flowers in this first photo are all fake (of course.)

This photo was taken from a taxi as I passed the Chinese Cultural Minority place on the way to the SOS clinic, one morning recently. A later trip is on the cards for this site.

And finally, some complimentary tourist snapshots, from the Confuscious Temple. These are just tourist pics, so no need to say much here.