Portrait of an LBX

Many who come to China are first struck by is how modern its Tier I cities are -- new subways, highways, shiny buildings, etc. Today's China is built on the migrant worker. Unable to make enough money in the fields or find work at home, they come to the rapidly developing cities looking for work. They build the apartments, office buildings and overabundance of five-star hotels where we live, work and bargain down the rates when our parents come into town because someone built too many five-star hotels for the Olympics. Most of these LBXes from the countryside have few skills except for a determination to do whatever it takes to help their families back home live a better life through the paltry sums they are able to send home each month. Last year about this time I took a bike ride to the still-incomplete Olympic Park in Beijing. I stopped for a chat with this migrant worker from Hebei province as he was taking a break for lunch. At the time, he had been working on the Bird's Nest for about a year, eleven hours a day. He made it home for four days for Chinese New Year, but then he was right back at it. Indeed, the eleven-hour days paid off -- at least for the rest of us. The Olympic venues were all completed with time to spare and we all enjoyed the spectacle.

China has a knack for knock-offs, to say the least. Lately, the term "shanzhai" (山寨) has come to describe this phenomenon. "Shanzhai" is literally a mountain fortress, but in pop culture the word now describes fake goods and those who make them -- the fakes are well done and the people making them well fortified. I imagine just about everything in this picture is shanzhai, right down to this guy's smokes, which are probably shanzhai Marlboro. I took this picture in Phoenix Old Town (凤凰古城), Hunan province, a beautiful reminder of what towns and villages in China must have been like before the wrecking ball hit.

This man is one of the many residents of Beijing and other Chinese cities who make a living digging bottles and cardboard out of trash cans around the city to sell to recycling centers. Others have a set spot in their neighborhood where residents will bring them their recyclables. But with the downturn in the economy and prices for recyclable goods dropping, competition in the business is fierce. The neighborhood recyclables-collecting types have said that if they leave their spot for a day, they will be replaced by someone else desperate to make a buck.

I took this picture almost four years ago on the steps of the Ruins of Saint Paul College in Macau. I wonder what she's doing today.

The Bund is one of the most fascinating places to sit and simply watch people go by. If you happen to have a camera with a zoom lens, it's even better. It's a beautiful scene, with Pudong reaching up into the sky on the east and colonial-era architecture stretching out into the north and south on the west. It's a tourist spot with an attractive force similar to Tiananmen Square, but without the awful Soviet-era architecture and overbearing police presence. LBXes from all across China come to take in the sights and experience Shanghai, and there is no shortage of interesting characters. As we mention in the LBX writeup accessible at the top of the page, the term LBX was first coined during our year studying abroad in Beijing in 2004-05. I took this picture on the Bund in 2005 (without any of the fancy equipment I now own, so apologies for the blurriness), and the title I gave it then was simply "LBX." I still find it equally fitting.

This is an LBX whose story I really wish I knew. I saw him walking down the road in southern Yunnan province by himself, holding these bright green leaves and looking lost in thought. I still wonder where he was going and if the leaves were just something he picked up by the side of the road or if he was taking them somewhere with a purpose.

A couple ladies coming off the fields in southern Yunnan province. Against the drab colors of Beijing and the blacks, browns and greys people seem to prefer here, LBXes in the fields in Yunnan seem incredibly colorful and alive and vibrant.

I'm afraid I didn't get out to shoot this weekend, although Sunday was one of the most beautiful days I've seen in a while in Beijing. I'm still going to keep the pictures going though, but I'll be pulling from the archives. Today's is a man from China's growing middle class. By standards here, he's fat, but on the whole, that's still considered a good thing. After all, we're still only about half a century away from a manmade famine that killed between 30 and 100 million people.

Note to self: LBX mommies are almost always happy to have their baby photographed by a random foreigner.

One of the more citified LBXes I've photographed for the site thus far. This was shot outside the modern art museum near my house. The woman with the baby is writing on her cell phone with a stylus.