The contrast between Beijing's 21st century ambition and the lives of ordinary Chinese is often a stark one.

Above & left: scavengers salvage what they can from a demolished dormitory that used to house hundreds of migrant labourers building the sci-fi looking Water Cube stadium. Beijing's Olympic construction boom helped sustain a small army of scavengers who scour the city for every bit of saleable scrap. But they were all booted out of Beijing ahead of the Games as part of the government's drive to present a sanitised, and modern image.