Insects, kidneys, snakes and more from Beijing's nighttime food hawkers.

While the world's gaze is directed at the currently spotless Beijing, China's other major city remains gritty, chaotic and fun.

Beijing – Based on pre-Olympics reports in the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, CNN and more, I wouldn’t have been completely surprised to see children smoking in Beijing restaurants, red-arm-band-wearing grandmothers turning their grandkids over to the secret police, and green-uniformed People’s Liberation Army soldiers ripping the cameras off my tired shoulders.

At the same time as Russian armed forces were pounding Georgian troops into submission in South Ossetia, bikini-clad warriors of a different kind are battling it out on a fake beach in gigantic Chaoyang Park in east Beijing with a very different result. 

 The world's best athletes in motion. 

Balloon-like mascots and hip-hop cheerleaders entertain Olympic spectators during a women's basketball game. 

Beijing – The idea of the blood-soaked hands of the Chinese ruling class somehow befouling the principles of the Olympic movement is as silly as the barely clad dance pack girls who run out onto the basketball courts while athletes grab water for relief from Beijing’s sweltering heat.

The 798 art zone in north east Beijing is this city's version of King/Queen West.

A late night tour of Beijing's Olympic stadium.

A fellow passenger on the relatively small cruise ship, the Victoria Katrina, insists he saw a dead body floating among the filth in China’s legendary Yangtze River as we wind along this rapidly rising waterway that fuels the gigantic Three Gorges Dam.

Follow NOW Olympic correspondent Michael Hollett with this picture gallery of his journey up the Yangtze River to Beijing. 

As I head from my plane into Shanghai’s gleaming new airport terminal, amazingly built in one year, instead of being greeted by machine gun totting soldiers and intimidating stares I encounter the schmaltzy strains of muzak Moon River playing over the sound system and a sprinkling of unarmed military.