Biking along a small stone street in Nanluoguxian hutong on Friday night, and thinking about how clear the sky was and how beautiful the weather had turned, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a man sitting on the street. I noticed him because of his almost defiant pose. With a bright red bandanna across his forehead, he looked as if he owned the street. I turned to look and suddenly slammed on my brakes. It was Qiteng, sitting on a rock in front of a small jewelry store, with two caged singing crickets behind him and his dog seated at his leg.

I almost hadn't noticed Qiteng because it had already turned dark. I waved to him and he immediately jumped up, smiled and gave me a hug. It was a big and unexpected hug which made me lose my balance. We were about two blocks from where we had first met and I asked him what he was doing here on this trendy and busy road. He was out enjoying the pleasant weather, he said.

I pointed to an addition to his family of pets and he proudly showed me: singing crickets. When I mentioned that my mother was interested in buying a chop from him, he shook his head incessantly, telling me that it would be a present. We chatted and I told him that I had put up his story up on the web for other people to see. He wasn't interested in that -- he just kept telling me that he would give me the chop. As I left him he sat back down, settling into his corner for the evening, seated in the same position as when I found him.

Further down the street, instead of the fireworks that set the city ablaze last week, this week a few Chinese people practiced another tradition of lighting bonfires in the street, apparently an old monthly tradition. Long trails of smoke flew up into the clear night air. For a moment I forgot entirely about the Olympics, with not a Fuwa mascot in sight or a volunteer standing nearby.

It's these small interactions that I love about this city. Despite being a sprawling metropolis and an "Olympic city," with impressive architecture a testament to its "modernity," Beijing is still very much a city filled with intimate and unchanging faces in front of an ever-changing backdrop. In a city that, on the surface, and from the 6 rings of highways that wind around it, appears overwhelmingly impersonal, one can find millions of stories.

So while Michael Phelps beat Mark Spitz's 1972 record with his eighth medal and China surpassed its previous gold medal record this weekend, life in old Beijing went on as usual.