I'm back in Beijing, staying near Nanluogu Xiang.  It's a hutong neighborhood that has been built into a touristy bar-and-boutique area.  But the old, low architecture is being preserved, albeit in revised form.  I had a nice walk this morning, out before the tourists descended, and could see and hear the Beijingers out for their morning exercises and chats.  Nice.

I'll have more on Beijing later.  For now I wanted to post some more photos of Nanjing.  After walking about a bit I felt a bit better about what was happening there.  The changes are still mind-blowing, but little bits of the older, greener, lower Nanjing are still around.  Near Gulou the trees look like they did twenty years ago, trained up to permit the buses to pass beneath:

Of course there are more cars and people (I was told that Nanjing University now has 30,000 students where before it had 8,000).   And that giant high rise looms up behind the old Drum Tower:

More pictures below the jump:

The John Rabe house (restored in 1997 or so):

The southern gate of the northern campus of Nanjing University:

Just to the west of that gate:

This might be the old market street, though it is no longer a market (it is the only street in the vicinity of what once was the market street, but perhaps the real market street has been consumed by one of the large construction projects in the area):

The Hopkins-Nanjing Center:

Inside a local market:

And here's something that I think captures a big part of what China is now: the title of a book in the airport newsstand, "Work for Myself.":