A photo of the Central Park in the fall taken by Zhong Ruiming was shown to the audience on Tuesday at the Asian Cultural Center, where Zhong launched his new photography book New York through the Lens of a Chinese Diplomat. HEZI JIANG / CHINA DAILY

He has gotten up at dawn to see the city before it awakes, taking a shot of a sanitation worker cleaning the deserted TKTS stairs in Times Square that would be crammed with tourists in a few hours.

He snapped a photo of a mom, with a baby tucked at her side and a young son by her side, beaming with pride after taking part in the Climate March. He captured the real New York as a boy snoozed away on a stroller while his parents cheered on marathon runners.

On the coldest day of this year, he went out to the Lunar New Year Parade to take photos of the clouds of people's breath next to the Year of the Monkey puppets. Once in a while, he also captured the perspective of a diplomat. From the balcony of the consulate, he took a bird's-eye-view photo of people packing the riverfront for the Fourth of July fireworks.

To reveal the complexity of the city, he shot the artificial limb of a homeless person with three young women's jumping in flip-flops.

"I pondered how different lives can be," he wrote in the caption.

The photo in his foreword he took at the Calvary Cemetery in Queens. The tombstones are in the foreground, but behind them, the Manhattan skyline, with the Empire State building in the center, is equally prominent.

Zhong referenced a line from Beijinger in New York, a popular Chinese TV series from the 1990s: If you love someone, send him to New York, because there is heaven; if you hate someone, send him to New York, because there is hell.

Zhong's works will be on display at the Asian Cultural Center through May 5.

hezijiang@chinadailyusa.com