![Chinese couple refusing to leave Hutong – the poor quarters of Beijing, China](https://frantisekstaud.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/photo-china-d-016.jpg)
I took this photograph in July 2006, two years before the Olympic Games in Beijing. To make more room for high-tech buildings, modern hotels and department stores, great parts of once beautiful hutongs – alleys – in the city center were being leveled and the people sent off to blocks of flats on the city suburb. Despite this heartbreak, several people stayed in the ruins – with their smiles still on.