I had the privilege to live and work in China during 1982 and 1983 in a time where the country was still just "opening up" after the Mao years. I was part of a team of four commercial engineers working at the flight research institute in YanLiang about 80km north of the ancient capital city of Xian. As a keen hobby photographer, I spent a lot of my spare time trying to document the people and sights of this fascinating land. Moving around and taking pictures was made very much more difficult by the fact that we were so obvious in our appearance and always attracted large inquisitive crowds in our town. This situation made it often almost impossible to get images of the people undisturbed in their daily lives, the very presence of a foreigner would often change the scene quite dramatically. I returned with rolls of film, of which many have not seen the light of day until now. China has moved very rapidly since these times and whilst many scenes can still be witnessed unchanged today, I would now like to share these images that few westerners had the chance the see.