China in 1900: 30 Rare Photos From a German Soldier’s Album

These rare photographs, taken from the personal album of a German soldier, offer a unique and intimate glimpse into everyday life in China around 1900.

Captured during a turbulent period of political change and foreign presence, the images show streets, markets, local people, architecture, and daily routines with a documentary honesty rarely seen in official records of the time.

From traditional scenes of village life to the growing influence of Western presence, the album preserves a valuable visual record of China at the turn of the 20th century through the eyes of an ordinary outsider.

Chinese opera performance costumes, China, circa 1900

Probably a courtesan, China, circa 1900

Typical Han Chinese women's clothing and headwear (probably a courtesan), China, circa 1900

Typical Han Chinese women's clothing and headwear (probably courtesans), China, circa 1900

Two Chinese girls, circa 1900

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Vintage Photos Capture Everyday Life in Qingdao in the Early 1900s

Life in Qingdao, archaically known as Tsingtao, in the early 1900s unfolded at the crossroads of cultures, shaped by its years under German control following the German occupation of Jiaozhou Bay.

Wide, orderly streets and red-roofed villas stood in contrast to traditional Chinese neighborhoods, where markets buzzed with local vendors and fishermen brought in the day’s catch along the coast. European-style cafés, churches, and breweries, most notably the origins of Tsingtao Beer, introduced new rhythms of social life, while rickshaws and horse-drawn carts remained common sights.

Amid colonial administration and growing trade, daily life blended East and West: Chinese laborers, German officials, merchants, and missionaries all moved through the same port city, creating a unique atmosphere of transition, adaptation, and quiet tension beneath its seaside charm.

Below is a collection of vintage photos, via Wolfgang Wiggers, that capture everyday life of Qingdao in the early 1900s, during the German colonial period.

Chinese grain mill, Qingdao

Chinese orchestra in Qingdao

Chinese procession in Qingdao

Chinese wedding palanquin, Qingdao

Chinese street artists in Qingdao

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Fascinating Vintage Photos Capture Life in China in the Early 1920s

Life in China during the early 1920s was a study in stark contrasts, defined by a mesmerizing blend of ancient traditions and rapid modernization.

In cosmopolitan hubs like Shanghai and Guangzhou, the streets buzzed with a newfound energy as electric trams, early automobiles, and neon signs began to redefine the skyline. This was the era of the “Modern Girl,” where the traditional Qipao evolved into a stylish, body-hugging garment, and Western jazz mingled with Chinese opera in local tea houses. However, just beyond the glittering city gates, life remained largely agrarian and grueling, with the rural population facing the constant shadow of famine and the unpredictable whims of local warlords.

It was a decade of intense social flux, where the intellectual fervor of university students in Beijing sought to dismantle old Confucian hierarchies, while the majority of the nation still navigated a world governed by the lunar calendar and ancestral customs. These fascinating photos, via Wolfgang Wiggers, were taken by an unidentified German traveler to China in 1922.

At The Quay, China, 1922

At the South Gate, China, 1922

Carriers, China, 1922

City Wall, Kaying (Meizhou), China, 1922

Female Carrier, China, 1922

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Extraordinary Photos of 1,400-Year-Old Ginkgo Tree Shedding Its Leaves

This old ginkgo tree located at Gu Guanyin Buddhist Temple, in Zhongnan Mountain region of China. The temple was built in Tang dynasty in 628, with more than 1,400 years history. It’s said this ginkgo tree is planted by Li Shimin, Emperor Taizong himself.

Each year, during late autumn, this 1,400-year-old Gingko tree sheds its leaves, forming a thick carpet of vibrant yellow around the temple grounds, attracting tourists and photographers from around the world. The juxtaposition of the tree’s golden leaves against the historic architecture of the temple makes it a magical sight.

Ginkgos would probably be totally extinct if it weren’t for human cultivation starting about 4000 years ago in China. They are the last remnant of the species that covered the entire planet during the last part of the dinosaur era and were cultivated from rare refugia in the Himalayas for religious reasons.

Reverence for the ginkgo passed from earliest periods first from unknown origin into early hermitic movements (anachronistically known as “Daoism”) and then into Buddhism. The species living today, Ginkgo biloba, is functionally identical to fossils dating back 270 million years although clearly some genetic changes did happen over time.

30 Historical Photos of Prisoners in the Cangue in China From Between the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

A cangue, in Chinese referred to as a jia or tcha is a device that was used for public humiliation and corporal punishment in East Asia and some other parts of Southeast Asia until the early years of the twentieth century. It was also occasionally used for or during torture. Because it restricted a person’s movements, it was common for people wearing cangues to starve to death as they were unable to feed themselves.

A form of pillory used in China for minor offenses, the cangue is described here by the writer F. Alverez Semedo in his History of China:

“It is a great thick board, four or five palme square, with a hole cut in the middle of it about the bigness of a man’s neck. This they fasten about their necks, and to it are hung two scrolls of paper of a hand’s breadth, wherein are written his fault, and the cause of his punishment; they serve also to show that the board has not been opened; and so with these great boards about their necks, these poor wretches are brought out every day and exposed to shame in the public streets, for fifteen, twenty or thirty days, according as they are adjudged by their sentence, whose greatest rigour is that during all that time these boards are not taken off their necks, neither night or day.”

The word “cangue” is French, from the Portuguese “canga,” which means yoke, the carrying tool has also been used to the same effect, with the hands tied to each arm of the yoke. Frequently translated as pillory, it was similar to that European punishment except that the movement of the prisoner’s hands was not as rigorously restricted and that the board of the cangue was not fixed to a base and had to be carried around by the prisoner.

At times, the cangue was used as a general means of restraining prisoners along with manacles and leg chains; this was true particularly of those with grave sentences or low social standing.

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Unique Photographs Capture Everyday Life in China During the Decades Following the Cultural Revolution

In 2009, Thomas Sauvin stumbled upon discarded film negatives he could purchase by the kilogram. The French national was alerted to them by a man in Beijing, who was collecting trash that could be melted down to extract silver nitrate — a substance that could be sold onto chemists and laboratories.

“He developed a network of people who collected negative films, X-rays, CDs, and anything else that contained silver nitrate,” Sauvin told the ABC. “Once he gathered everything, he put them in a pool of acid, and waited for silver nitrate to emerge — it looked just like gunpowder.”

At the time, Sauvin didn’t anticipate his initial discovery was going to launch a photography project with more than 800,000 images — he simply wanted to save the negatives from destruction. “So I made a deal with him to buy the negatives by the kilo,” Sauvin said. “I bought my first bag in May 2009.”

And in the process, Sauvin has incidentally archived one of the world’s biggest shifts — the rise of modern China and the country’s first forays into capitalist consumer culture. His collecting of ‘found’ Chinese photography has turned into the Beijing Silvermine.

Found, or vernacular photography refers to photographs captured by everyday people that were shot with no explicit artistic or commercial intent. And it’s these found photos that have led Sauvin to launch photobooks, exhibitions, and a popular Instagram account.

Sauvin, who has lived in China on and off since his school exchange in 1999, told the ABC that it was by chance that the Silvermine documented this period. “They were shot mostly between 1985 to 2005, because 1985 is when analogue photography started being accessible to everyday people in China, and 2005 is when digital photography started taking over,” Sauvin said.

What’s resulted is an archive packed full of candid portraits of people interacting with China’s newly reformed economy.

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Found Photographs Capture the Unexpected Role Cigarettes Play in Chinese Weddings in the 1980s and 1990s

Cigarettes played an unexpected role in Chinese weddings in the 1980s and 1990s. As a token of appreciation, it is customary for the bride to light a cigarette for each and every man invited. The bride and the groom are then invited to play some cigarette-smoking games of an unprecedented ingenuousness.

These photos come from the Beijing Silvermine project, an archive of half a million negatives salvaged over the years from a recycling plant on the edge of Beijing by the French collector and artist Thomas Sauvin.

Sauvin has been collecting photographs taken by ordinary Chinese since 2009, when he discovered a garbage dump on the outskirts of Beijing that housed bulks of discarded 35mm. negatives, ready to be processed to extract silver nitrate. He bought the negatives by the kilo and started an archival project, Beijing Silvermine, which now houses an estimate 500,000 negatives. The photographs, shot between 1985 to the early 2000s, when digital replaced analog, offer a surprisingly intimate glance at Chinese lives against the backdrop of the country’s vast social changes.

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40 Amazing Photographs Capture Everyday Life in Beijing, China in 1984

Thomas Hoepker began his photographic career in the 1960s and made his reputation through impactful reportage and stylish color features, working on stories as varied as the culture of the Mayan people, the rise of Muhammad Ali and the politics and everyday life in East Berlin, before the wall fell. He has also spent time in China, documenting everything from farm life in Yangshuo province to the hardships of Beijing. Below are 40 amazing photographs Hoepker took in Beijing in 1984:

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China in the 1870s Through Thomas Child’s Lens

Thomas Child (1841–1898) was born in Madeley (Shropshire, England). In 1870, he moved with his wife and children to Beijing, where he worked until 1889 as a gas engineer for the Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs.

Child was not a professional but a keen amateur photographer. Disinclined to document local life, he dedicated most of his attention to traditional architecture and monuments. His peregrinations through Beijing and its surroundings led him to northern sites such as the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan), the Great Wall and the Ming tombs.

Albeit being an amateur photographer, his photographs were sold commercially and found their way into private albums and publications well into the twentieth century. Their wide diffusion gradually shaped China’s image in foreign eyes.

These amazing photos were taken by Thomas Child that show life of China (mostly Beijing) in the 1870s.

An audience with the Tongzhi Emperor, in Tse Kuang Ko, Beijing, June 29, 1873 

Bronze armillary, Beijing Observatory, 1875

Gate tower of Qianmen and city walls, Beijing, 1875

Observatory, Beijing, circa 1875

Northern moat of the Forbidden City, Dagaoxuan Hall or Temple (大高玄殿) and Coal Hill, Beijing, 1876

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Marina Abramović & Ulay – The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk

Artists Marina Abramović and Ulay are known in many parts of the world as the lovers whose relationship ended at the Great Wall of China. Initially, when the couple planned the trip, they intended to get married at the center of the wall. However, it was years later when the couple finally acquired all the authorization required from the Chinese government and were able to raise funds for the project. Sadly, by then, the couple’s 12-year relationship has crumbled, and what started as a marriage celebration turned into last goodbyes for the couple.

In 1988, after several years of tense relations, Abramović and Ulay decided to end their intense artistic and personal relationship with a final performance in the form of a spiritual journey. After years of negotiations with the Chinese authorities, the artists got the permission to carry out “The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk”, in which they started to walk from different ends of the Chinese Wall in order to meet in the middle and say good-bye to each other. The final act would end their relationship and they decided to never meet again afterwards.

Abramović started walking at the eastern end of the Great Wall of China, at Shan Hai Guan, on the shores of the Yellow Sea, Gulf of Bohai, walking westward. Ulay started at the western end of the Wall, at Jaiyuguan, the south-western periphery of the Gobi Desert, walking eastward. After they both continuously walked for 90 says, covering 2500km each, they met at Er Lang Shan, in Shen Mu, Shaanxi province. Here, they embraced each other and said goodbye. From then on they would both go on with their life and work separately. As their work had often employed ritualized actions, mythology and Eastern thought, “The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk” has to be considered the perfect end of the common oeuvre.

Unlike other, less artisticly dramatic, Abramović and Ulay’s Great Wall of China Walk accomplishment meant the end of the journey, a collaboration, a lovers relationship and even an art form. This multidimensional end of such a long journey made the entire walk such an incredibly deep and spiritual journey. It is hard to imagine what would have gone through their heads in those 90 days of solo-walking.

Abramović described it as follows: “That walk became a complete personal drama. Ulay started from the Gobi Desert and I from the Yellow Sea. After each of us walked 2500 km, we met in the middle and said good-bye”. Abramović conceived this walk in a dream, and it provided what she thought was an appropriate, romantic ending to a relationship full of mysticism, energy, and attraction. She later described the process: “We needed a certain form of ending, after this huge distance walking towards each other. It is very human. It is in a way more dramatic, more like a film ending … Because in the end we both would be really alone, whatever we would do.”

The two artists supposedly didn’t speak to each other again for over 20 years — not until Ulay unexpectedly showed up at one of Abramović’s 2010 performances at the Museum of Modern Art.

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