In 1997, I was a guest photographer at the Beijing Film Academy when I made these street photos. China danced between a rapidly vanishing past and instantaneously appearing future. Hutongs were being demolished and families dispersed while towering hotels and office buildings arose in their place overnight. Commodities were rapidly displacing culture. Beijing and Shanghai were cities of contrasts and disparity: of peasant people and new money; of Mao’s Little Red Book and Elle China; of ubiquitous bicycles and not unoccasional Bentleys.

Beijing, 1997 (1–4, 6). Shanghai (5).