Mao's paradise

Stefan Hammer?s travels through China have produced an incisive look at urban life there ? in photographs taken predominantly in Shanghai, Beijing, Suzhou, Tianjin, and Hong Kong. He is drawn in equal measure to the ultramodern, hugely capitalist quarters of booming megacities and to neighbourhoods that are in danger of being torn down. How well are the Chinese doing at finding their own identity, one that is permanently marked by the old propaganda and defined by the panacea promised by consumerism?