(This thread is divided in two parts).
Famous Yunnanfu Bridge (1880)
Photograph: Jacques Bacot – 1880
French photographers found in Yunnanfu the welcome of the French Consular Offices, which real objective was to build railroads to Hanoi. The legend that set the picture along the Yangzi is false: the narrow of the river bed proves it.
Chinese wheelbarrow (1905)
Everybody knows that the wheelbarrow has been invented by the Chinese people but the sailing wheelbarrow is a standard in the literature related to travels, since most of the travellers admired it.
Advertising in China (1913)
China discovers the westerner tools. Maybe you will recognise the famous Qingdao beer. The brewery has been created by the germans in 1898 in the city which name is ‘Qingdao’.
A raft village of woodcutters on the Yangzi
On pictures from that period, the Yangzi is very often showed. It represents THE Chinese river while the Huang He is almost never mentioned.
Sentenced to death…(1902)
The cangue is one of the Chinese torture that really excited the European imagination: hung by the neck, without touching the ground, the prisoner slowly suffocates before dying. On this picture, the man smiles, and wears a French hat (canotier) : is he a model (paid by the photographer) or a real prisoner sentenced to death ?
Reception in Moscow for the Mongolian Ambassador (1924)
Amazing picture! The man who wears the suit richly brocaded of the Mongolian nobility is the Bolchevik Russian diplomat who is trying to charm his Mongolian counterpart who is dressed like westerners. The republic has just been proclaimed in Mongolia and the Bolcheviks do need the Mongolians to reduce the last tsarist armies in Central Asia.
The General Chiang Kai-shek and his wife (aren’t they look beautiful, I love that picture)
This is the hat that is important, the westerner accessory discreetly displayed… Confident in his westerner education, confident in his external supports, Chiang didn’t imagined that some farmers could conquer China. His wife, daughter of a banker, and sister-in-law of Sun Yat-Sen , presents the same westernization of the sinity. But, somehow or other, Taiwan tries to preserve the independence that Chiang offered.
The Yellow Cruise going through Beijing
This is a propaganda picture. The French cars are arriving in Beijing. But, contrary to the legend, this is not the Forbidden City, how could they have get into it?
Chinese teacher (1935)
Little colored round glasses, long white beard, we are in the Blue Lotus (one of the adventures of Tintin) : the wise man Wang-Jen-Ghié is the way that Hergé saw the Chinese learned. According to the legend, he assists the missionaries: the Chinese wisdom assisting the westerner wisdom …..
Opium den (1906)
The opium is a stereotype…Since the beginning of the XIXth century, opium means sinity.
The English propaganda contributed a lot to this meaning, forgetting that most of the Chinese governments were fighting against opium that the English dealers flooded in all china…
(to be continued to the 2nd thread)