Beijing in Pictures

When former NBA
star John Amaechi, who was raised in
England, accepted assignments from Amnesty
International (where he serves as a spokesperson) and
the BBC (where he provides basketball commentary) to
cover the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, he knew exactly
who he wanted as a travelling companion. His friend Jeff
Sheng is ethnically Chinese, fluent in the language,
and has spent more than a year living and
traveling mainland China as a foreign exchange student
and frequent visitor. Sheng is also something of
a wunderkind. At 27 his arresting photographs have
appeared in more than 20 exhibits across the country,
including at Yale University and as part of
"LA25," a select group of diverse artists showing
October 8 to November 16 at Los Angeles Contemporary
Exhibitions in Hollywood. And he's a visiting
professor at the University of California, Santa
Barbara.

What resulted was
a series of photographs, which we've excerpted here, as
well as daily musings on life in China, the Olympic
Games, and anything else that comes to mind. For a
full account go to beijinglegacyblog.com.