Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China - 12 December 1999; no people in view; Shenyang is not the sort of place in China that tourists would knowingly want to - or get to - visit. In 1989, when I spent a year there as EU Director of a joint Europe/China environmental project in air pollution, it was a grim, industrial city. Moreover, one of its abiding delights is its extreme climate, with astonishingly cold winters, direct from Siberia. I shot this in a mid-winter walk in -20C. The weird sky owes much to the extreme cold, with the sun struggling through layers of stratospheric ice. And the cluttered skyline is down to the universal use of coal for heating throughout the fierce winter. The result of all this, strangely, is this visual beauty we see here. Beijing, China - 26 January 1984 Two hardy local people are standing by Kunming Lake, an ancient recreational and beauty spot in Beijing's Imperial Summer Palace. This artificially dredged lake occupies three-quarters of the ground of this summer retreat of the emperors. Longevity Hill can be seen in the background. Because it's November and icy cold, soon the snows will start falling and the lake will freeze for months. This is a historic image; today this idyllic scene would be submerged by masses of foreign and domestic tourists. Editor Note: This image is 35 years old. Whilst its quality is consistent with 35mm analog film technical characteristics and limitations of the early 1980?????愀, it is not comparable to improved image quality obtainable from current high resolution digital sensors.