My favourite place to photograph in Beijing is the historic hutongs (alleyways) in the old town. Originally built by the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty in the Thirteenth Century, these narrow passages are filled with stone and tiled courtyard houses that once housed servants of the imperial palace and their families. Plain grey brick walls are interspersed with bright red doors with grinning lion head knockers and banners with good luck sayings on them in elegantly-painted Chinese characters. Behind these are courtyard houses, where several families or generations live communally. In the summer, older men hang around the doorways with their t-shirts rolled up over their stomachs in the so-called “Beijing bikini”, while brightly coloured birds chirp from overhead cages, hung below the eaves of houses.

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