Here's factory in the Chinese city of Dongguan that makes laptop chargers, or power supplies as they are sometimes known.

Actually I put these photos up in reverse order. The top photo shows the laptop chargers being packed for shipping, the second photo shows the stickers being added before packing. The lower three images all show chips being mounted onto circuit boards.

It's worth noting that the assembly line girls have to make sure that the back legs of their chairs do not go over the yellow line painted onto the floor. Slouching is bad for productivity.

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG DONGGUAN CHINA PHOTOGRAPHER

I did a corporate job in Macau today.

I can't say who the client was, but I can say that they had some great dinner entertainment to wrap up their conference.

Dancing girls and shadow puppets.

All the way from Thailand.

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG CHINA PHOTOGRAPHER

Here's a factory in Shenzhen that makes mobile phone chargers.

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG SHENZHEN CHINA PHOTOGRAPHER

Yesterday I went to the remote Sokos Islands of Hong Kong to check out the plastics pollution there.

I had heard it was really bad. The islands are uninhabited and there is no ferry service. Two minutes is all it took for me to collect these 20 cigarette lighters to create this colourful shot. I needed a simple background, so I found a clean bit of beach to stand them up in a row like soldiers, but the rest of the beach was literally 'trashed'.

It took me less time to line up these plastic bottles. Most of them are made from PET plastic, which can be easily recycled. But not if they are washed up on a random beach somehwere. Many still have their tops screwed on which is how they managed to float to here, yet ironically most drink bottle tops cannot be recycled.

Sifting through the plastics garbage, certain categories present themsleves. One quirky category is plastic toys.

I love the toy panda. We are in South China after all.

Medical waste. An altogether more sinister category of marine debris collectables. Does anyone know where this stuff comes from? Ships? Hospitals? Unscrupulous medical waste disposal companies? If anyone knows, please tell me. I would love to investigate further.

Here's an overview of the whole beach. It looked pretty filthy to me, but apparently this South Sokos Island beach is much cleaner than the previous time Nico Zurcher visited it. 

Nico is a marine water management researcher from Hong Kong University who brought me there. He's been studying this beach over time for his MSc. The main problem is that the South Sokos Island beach is not 'gazetted' by the Hong Kong Government. Most gazetted beaches in Hong Kong get lifeguards, water quality monitoring (e coli etc), shark nets, showers, changing rooms - and regular cleaning. Back in the 1960's this beach would have been pristine. It would not have needed cleaning. Discarded plastics in all their different shapes and sizes really are a huge problem.

No story on marine plastics pollution would be complete without the obligatory and ever-present nurdles.

I've talked about them before on this blog, and I'm not going to get started on them now, so for the full story on these poisonous little horrors, ('pre-production plastic pellets', as they are officially known), check out my 'Hong Kong Nurdles' post from last year.

But as kind of an aside, I am instead re-posting this photo of a worker operating a plastics extrusion machine in China. Of all the places nurdles end up, this is the only real intended destination for nurdles - not remote beaches.

I found some ants who had made their home in a pile of polystyrene foam.

I also found one dead finless porpoise. We contemplated slicing it open to check for nurdles, but then thought better of it as the stench was terrible.

It's impossible to say what killed this finless porpoise. One shouldn't speculate too much, but maybe it got hit by a passing Macau ferry. Or maybe it ate one too many nurdles. Or perhaps the pesticides flowing down the Pearl River from the Guangdong industrial farms killed it. Or the e-waste dioxins and PCBs that flow into the sea from the Lianjiang River which runs through Guiyu.

Or it could simply have just died of old age.

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG CHINA PHOTOGRAPHER

Here are photos from a factory in Dongguan that makes plastic parts for electronic calculators.

Pre-production plastic pellets, or nurdles, are extruded into calculator shell casings.

Workers use the screen printing technique to paint the brand name, numbers, cancel 'C', and various mathematical symbols onto the product.

The buttons are checked for quality control before final assembly.

And that's all I saw. Just another tiny link in a long supply chain. No electronic parts are made in this factory, only the plastic parts.

People assume that a single product is made in one factory only. It surprises many to know that most consumer products are actually assembled from various component parts manufactured in a multitude of different factories - often in cities miles apart. Some factories make the plastic bits, some make the circuit boards, and some just do the paint finish.

I must admit I'm fascinated by plastics. Call me quirky, but I find plastic extrusion machines endlessly fascinating. You would have to see one in action first to know what I mean. Thirteen years in the Pearl River Delta, and I'm turning into a manufacturing geek...

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG DONGGUAN CHINA PHOTOGRAPHER

Here's a factory in Dongguan that assembles TV remote controls for export.

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG DONGGUAN CHINA PHOTOGRAPHER

Over the coming days I will be posting photographs from factories in China that I visited late last year.

Today, the Nintendo DS integrated circuit board factory in Dongguan...

These photos represent only a single part of the entire supply chain, ie the integrated circuit board assembly stage. Other stages in the design, production and shipping of Nintendo Game Boy products take place at supplier factories that I did not visit.

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG DONGGUAN CHINA PHOTOGRAPHER

By popular request, here's a final set of photos from the Great Hong Kong Train Protest-cum-Siege Of Legco.

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG CHINA PHOTOGRAPHER

It was always a done deal.

Tonight lawmakers in Hong Kong finally approved funding for the controversial Express Rail Link to Guangzhou in a 31-21 vote during a meeting of the city's Legislative Council Finance Committee.

After a marathon two days of filibustering the bill eventually got through, sparking a wave of popular revolt which manifested itself in scuffles with riot police. The mood was darker than yesterday, although the singing, dancing and drumming continued.

Protesters staged sit-ins at various intersections in Central district, after the results of the vote were announced at 6.30pm.

This effectively locked down the whole area and ensured that all exits to the Legislative Council Building were blocked. This is the scene in Jackson Road, next to the Hong Kong Club Building.

The object of their ire, Transport Secretary Eva Cheng, was prevented from leaving.

The police started to remove the protesters one by one, but soon gave up as the number of protesters swelled.

Once the dust settles, it will be interesting to assess the political fall-out from these last few days of anti-Government protests.

The New Territories village of Tsoi Yuen lies directly in the path of the Express Rail Link, and will have to be destroyed to make way for the fast train. It will be fascinating to see how this popular grass roots movement mobilizes to protect the villagers of Tsoi Yuen from forced eviction in October.

Probably the best thing they could do is to stay positive, like this little anti-rail link protester...

Twitter: #stopxrl

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG CHINA PHOTOGRAPHER

This wasn't supposed to happen.

In a slight departure from the plot, the anti-rail link protestors decided, en masse, to climb the hill up to Hong Kong Government House in order to 'wake up' Chief Executive Donald Tsang. Usually 'public processions' of ten or more people need prior permission from the police. This was never going to happen tonight.

The mood felt somewhat like how I imagine how Paris would have felt like before the riots of May 1968. With a touch of the Hong Kong July 1st 2003 anti-Article 23 mass protests. The crowd was young, happy and idealistic. The so-called 'post-1980's generation' kids played their drums and guitars, whilst others sang and danced. They blocked the road in front of Government House for around two hours. Suprisingly, the protest passed off peacefully. I belive the last time Government House saw such large protests was during the 1967 Communist riots, but I could be wrong.

The Mexican wave was performed a few times, and there was lots of laughing and goofing around. It felt beatnik.

The police were certainly caught off guard, with the approaches to Government House left completely unprotected.

Celebrity protestor Christina Chan was chased by the police. As usual.

Back in Chater Garden next to LegCo, a 'tent city' has sprung up, with around 100 protesters camping there overnight. They vow to remain whilst the Express Rail Link funding bill passes through LegCo.

The anti-rail link protestors were getting up to all sorts of antics.

I have never seen Statue Square so full of people just venting off. Despite the cold weather, you can really feel the political temperature in Hong Kong hotting up.

Meanwhile supporters of the train were having their heads shaved in protest, er, support.

The pro-Beijing pro-train lot are mobilizing themselves against the anti-train, pro-universal suffrage kids through Facebook. It's a showdown.

I think Beijing is going to be really mad tomorrow. They will be asking themelves, has the Hong Kong Government really lost control this time?

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG CHINA PHOTOGRAPHER