Style Gallery Blog

Traffic in China is atrocious. Even the shortest of journeys can leave me clinging to the car seat in fear of my life. Pedestrians and cyclists just wander across the road without looking. Taxi drivers constantly swerve left and right. People drive on the wrong side of the road. They ignore traffic lights. Buses just stop wherever they like, even if it’s not near the curb. And one way roads seem to be only a suggestion rather than the law. In all this chaos stands a lone traffic police woman. Smartly dressed, here in winter uniform, and precisely signalling to the traffic. It is a shame they seem to be largely ignored by the drivers.

The winters in the North East of China can be extremely harsh. Temperatures in the Liaoning city of Anshan, where this picture was taken, can fall as low as -22°C before any wind chill has been taken into account. It is a biting cold that quickly attacks any exposed skin, causing your face and hands to become sore and red. The north east of China is also know for it’s heavy industry and grime. The buildings of Anshan usually show that grim industrial landscape well. However, on the day of this photography, it had snowed overnight and the sun was out in a clear blue sky. Just for a minute, it created an image of beauty out of drabness.

Ulanhot is a small city in the north east of Inner Mongolia, in the north east of China.  It is a remote, dry and dust place with little for the tourist to see. I went there twice back in 2006, to teach English at the high schools there. I was the first foreign teacher to visit their schools, as so caused a bit of a stir with TV and Newspaper reporters following me everywhere. I asked my students, what interesting things are there in Ulanhot for a tourist to go and see. They thought about this for a while and finally settled on an answer—the supermarket. The city had recently had a small supermarket open and this, the students thought, was the highlight of the city for any visitor. There is in fact some interesting things to see. To the northern end of the city is a temple dedicated to Gengis Khan, the great Mongol king who united the country and built the great Mongol empire that would later engulf China and most other Asian countries as far as the Middle East, and even the eastern edge of Europe. This picture was taken from my hotel window looking northwards. The weather outside was a bitterly cold minus twenty something degrees.