Portrait of an LBX

I'm posting this image in honor of the fact that winter in Beijing seems finally to be passing. Being basically on the edge of a desert, weather in Beijing swings from one extreme to the other in the blink of an eye, with only a few short weeks' respite between dry, cold winters and dripping wet, hot summers.

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.

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.