Within the panorama of a dream, a solitary light gleamed from the window of a vast red palace, what lay behind the glass was the imagination of a 14 year old boy, his head spinning from the discovery of an ancient, mysterious land that somehow lay within his grasp. It would be another 7 years before his dream would become a reality, and even in reality it seemed more of a dream.

The boy of course was me, I had stolen a book of poetry by Li Po, a master words-smith of the T'ang Dynasty, from a friends parents bookshelves. Dreams and reality collided and reproduced in such beautiful clarity within his words, a love affair with China had begun.

The photos in this tome are intended to portray my inner world as I wandered the streets of Beijing for 6 weeks in 1984. Shot on a hot Olympus OM-one using 400 Ektachrome slide film and extended exposure. The weather clear blu and always well below zero, I stored each roll in the freezer of my hotel and pulled them out as needed, in the hope that somehow some of the frozen air would be frozen onto the image. Stupid really, but I was young full of lies, alcohol
and trying to capture what in essence for me was a waking dream. Somehow, by blind luck and rampant stupidity I managed to capture a little of that quality.

We mistake the market for the nation, one billion people consuming a single timezone, feudal, colonized, now canonized as a Mecca of capital. Corporations and national leaders implore us to
view China as a percentage, if only we can monopolize 2% of the Chinese sock market,
we shall forever be wealthy.

Neglect history.

In many ways we still see this vast nation as a product of the age of colonization, a Victorian image, from when a weakened corrupt empire crumbled before the might of the west gunboat diplomacy. Now the last legacies of this age are being returned to their rightful birthplace, Hong Kong, Macao, are back in the embrace of their nation.

If you view this as an evil being visited upon an innocent, then read, history is not owned by this century or last. The political structures that exist today will not exist in a hundred years, Tibet will be free, Hong Kong just another city on the coast and with a little more yearning on the part of the average Chinese, economic freedoms will be matched by political and personal freedoms. The Chinese have never known democracy, it is as foreign to them as any other imported concept. History they do understand, and more than us they understand that their forebears watch over their shoulders. While we would desecrate any tomb for the "good" of all, the chinese understand that the occupants of the tomb are as alive in spirit as if they still walked the earth.