Portrait of an LBX

An old peasant man stops to pack his pipe during our walk through the Chujiawangwu Village surroundings with Mr. Chu and Little Liu.

I'm not vigilant enough to be able to tell if this teen is Kazakh or Kyrgyz -- both seem to be prominent in the Lake Karakul region of Xinjiang in China's far northwest on the road to Pakistan. Regardless of their ethnic makeup, the locals at Lake Karakul are all extremely aggressive in trying to get money out of tourists, demanding money to look at the lake, camp in the area, stay in a yurt, and pretty much anything else you could possibly do. This particular young man was about to try to push a camel ride on us. The vibrant blue of Lake Karakul is in the background.

The universal language of flirting -- Kashgar Old Town, Xinjiang

An old muslim man leans against the steps of Id Kah mosque in Kashgar, Xinjiang. During prayer time, beggars will sit at the entrances to the mosque to receive alms, but I don't believe this man was one of them.

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.