I was also a bit further back, and used a horizontal frame. So we shot the same subject, but in quite different ways. You stressed the guard, I stressed the unity of past and present.
I remembered this shot when I was in Beijing last month. Here's my own version:http://www.worldisround.com/articles/291935/photo97.html Sixteen months after you made this picture, I shot the very same guard. My color is a bit less saturated, and my view is frontal. I also cropped out the distractions on the top and lower left, and shifted the arch to below shoulders instead of coming out of his head. I organized my image around the geometry of the facade, the portrait, and the guard.
