That was then (before the Olympic Games), this was now (after the Olympic Games)

I took this photograph shortly before the Olympic Games opened. I shot it from a bridge over the Second Ring Road, not far from where I live in Dongzhimen, close to the Dongzhimen Subway Station. As you can see, the street lights all are festooned with Olympic banners. Since this was a weekend and the odd-even driving rules had been instituted, the traffic on the ring road was very light. The picture below was shot earlier this month. It's a stretch of the Second Ring Road bit south of the photo above near the Dongsishitiao Subway Station. Since the games are over, all the banners gone.

The white office tower in the photo below is the Poly Group building. One of Beijing's nicest theaters, the Poly Theater, is across the street. I had the good fortune to get free tickets for a show there put on by the China National Disabled People's Performance Art Troupe during the Beijing Para-Olympics (more on that in a future post).

Most of the construction in these photographs is of very recent vintage, not even a decade old. New high rises and office towers have sprouted up all along this stretch of the Second Ring Road. For example, construction work on the white building in the top photo started in 2005. At least that's what one of my former Beijing International Studies University (BISU) students, a young lady from Shandong Province, once told me. "Shan" and "dong" are both flat tones and the characters are 山东 (these characters mean "East of the Mountain;" 山 is "mountain," while 东 is east.

This student, whose photo is below, informed me that when she first arrived in Beijing three years ago, construction work on that box-like white high rise had just gotten underway. She has really helped this laowai deal with the practical problems expats face while living in Beijing, ranging from assisting me deposit my rent money into my landlord's bank account at China Merchants Bank to translating during a recent visit to Tongren Eye Hospital (my optometry-related Mandarin is very weak!). Since this young woman is very clever and hard working, I expect her to go far and be one among many examples of upward social mobility as China's economy continues its rapid development.