Amazing Photographs Capture Everyday Life of Old Shanghai During the 1920s and 1930s

Old Shanghai was a city unlike any other. Notable for its free port, it was where the whole world came to work and play. Disparate Europeans and adventuring Americans rubbed shoulders with Jewish émigrés, Japanese expats and Russians: it was indeed a city with many faces.

In the 1920s, an eighteen year old Frenchman called Louis-Philippe Messelier set forth for the city of Shanghai to partake in the buzzing wool trade there. Based in the French concession of Shanghai, he juggled his business career with taking photographs as a journalist for the French Journal of Shanghai.

Louis-Philippe Messelier was everywhere: down the streets to see the ritual processions, the acrobats and the snake charmers; at the races with the local aristocracy; inside film studios; on the top of roof taking aerial views; in the countryside admiring the beauty of antic remains or fishermen’s cottages. He captured everything in a sincere and singular manner.

Snake charmer, Shanghai, 1929

Japanese ladies in Shanghai's harbor, 1930

Shanghai, the Bund, 1929

Crowd and boats on the bund N°1, Shanghai, 1929

Crowd and boats on the bund N°2, Shanghai, 1929

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Last Days of Shanghai: Photos by Jack Birns Give Us a Sense of What China Was Like From 1947-1949

Shipping out to China in December 1947 with three ten-year-old German cameras and a plum assignment from LIFE magazine, Jack Birns was fulfilling a boyhood dream. The reality was something else: refugees and prostitutes, soldiers and beggars, street executions and urban protests photographed in difficult and often dangerous circumstances amidst the poverty, corruption, and chaos of an expanding civil war.

By then the ruling Nationalist Party had been battling the Communist threat for more than two decades, and Birns focused his camera on the human drama unfolding as war pressed ever closer to the country's financial, cultural, and commercial capital. His effort to show China's misery up close ran afoul of Time-Life publisher Henry R. Luce's fervent anti-communism, and for half a century many of these historic photographs lay unpublished in Time-Life's archives.

Seen through the lens of hindsight, Birns' photographs give us a sense not only of what China was like more than fifty years ago, but also of why the warfare, weariness, and desperation of the time proved such fertile soil for communist revolution.

Today these everyday scenes of ordinary people—pedicab drivers, street vendors, bar girls, police, politicians, prisoners—tell a story of national resilience and dignity in the midst of enveloping poverty, repression, and fear. Birns's stark black and white photographs capture the dramatic end of an era, but they also look forward, letting us glimpse how Shanghai's past prefigures the city's commercial and cultural revival in the 1990s.

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Rare Vintage Pictures of Great Wall of China in the 1900s

Here is a small collection of 16 rare vintage pictures of Great Wall of China before and in the 1900s.

ca. 1900-01

1899

The Great Wall near Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province, China, 1874

1907

A small camel train and some donkeys from Mongolia enroute to Peking, passing through the Pa-ta-ling Gatway of the Great Wall of China, 1902

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Early Photos of China and Hong Kong From 1868-1872

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Scottish photographer and travel writer John Thomson took four journeys across China. His photographs capture scenes and people from all walks of life—ministers, high officials, wealthy traders, street vendors, brides, boat women, monks, and soldiers—providing a lasting record of nineteenth-century China’s landscapes, architecture, communities, and customs.

A Foreign Settlement, (Shantou, Guangdong 1871)

A Cantonese Schoolboy, (Guangzhou, Guangdong, 1869–70)

A Manchu Bride, (Beijing 1871–72)

A Boatwoman, (Guangzhou, Guangdong 1869–70)

Sedan Chair, (Hong Kong 1868–71)

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Wonderful Color Photos of Tibet From Between 1940s and 1950s

In early 1946, the author Heinrich Harrer and a companion, Peter Aufschnaiter, arrived in Tibet after a hazardous 21-month flight from a wartime internment camp in India. Officials ordered them to leave, then relented. Extraordinary experiences befell Mr. Harrer during seven years in the veiled land beyond the Himalayas. Before China invaded Tibet, he became a friend and tutor of the Dalai Lama, its spiritual and temporal ruler.

Cheeks ballooning, monks force sirenlike blasts from silver trumpets as they clear the way for their king.

The Potala, fortress of Tibet's god-king, broods over the flooded Kyi Valley.

In summer the Dalai Lama quits his winter quarters at the Potala and journeys to the Norbu Lingka (Jewel Park), two miles away. Here, at the ruler's return in autumn, townspeople throng the poplar-lined lane to watch the royal cavalcade.

The Dalai Lama's mother and sister defy convention with Western glasses. Dekyi Tshering (right), once a humble farm wife, rose to an awesome position as Tibet's "Great Mother" when her son became Dalai Lama in 1940. She and her daughter wear brocade hats fringed with silk. Eyeglasses were taboo in the god-king's presence.

Top Tibetan officials marvel at a souvenir from America. A finance secretary peers through a slide viewer, memento of a Tibetan trade delegation's mission to the United States in 1948.

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11 Rare Vintage Photographs Captured Daily Life in China in the 19th Century

Here is a rare photo collection that shows daily life of China in the 19th century.

Bridge, environs of Shanghai, c 1900

Creek at low tide, Shanghai, c 1900

Gate to the old city, Shanghai, ca. 1890s

Great Wall, ca. 1880s

Inside the Old City of Shanghai, circa 1900

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Pictures of the Aftermath of the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China in 1989

David Turnley was in Paris when he got the call. His brother Peter was in Beijing to cover the visit of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to China but was on the line with different, more exciting news. A small group of students had taken to the streets in protest in Tiananmen Square—and their numbers were swelling.

“I think something is happening here,” Peter told his brother. “You need to cover this too,” Peter urged.

What had started with a handful of students “soon turned into 10,000, and a few days after that, a million,” recalls Peter, all in support of greater political and personal freedoms. The year 1989 was a time of historic change in entrenched political systems like the Soviet Union and South Africa, and the Chinese students wanted to be part of it.

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Stories Behind the “Tank Man” of the Iconic Tiananmen’s Photographs in 1989

Twenty-five years ago today, the Tank Man, the nickname of an anonymous man who stood in front of a column of tanks on June 5, 1989, the morning after the Chinese military had suppressed the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 by force. The man achieved widespread international recognition due to the videotape and photographs taken of the incident. Some have identified the man as Wang Weilin (王維林), but the name has not been confirmed and little is known about him or of his fate after the confrontation that day.

Five photographers managed to capture the event on film and get their pictures published in its aftermath. On June 4, 2009, another photographer released an image of the scene taken from ground level. Today, images of what happened at Tiananmen Square are still blocked on the Internet in China due to what John Palfrey of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society has described as “the world's most sophisticated means of Internet filtering.”

The most used photograph of the event was taken by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press, from a sixth floor balcony of the Beijing Hotel, about half a mile (800 meters) away from the scene. Widener was injured and suffering from flu. The image was taken using a Nikon FE2 camera through a Nikkor 400mm 5.6 ED IF lens and TC-301 teleconverter. Low on film, a friend hastily obtained a roll of Fuji 100 ASA color negative film, allowing him to make the shot. Though he was concerned that his shots were not good, his image was syndicated to a large number of newspapers around the world, and was said to have appeared on the front page of all European papers.

Photo: Jeff Widener/Associated Press

Another version was taken by Stuart Franklin of Magnum Photos from the fifth floor of the Beijing Hotel. His has a wider field of view than Widener's, showing more tanks farther away. He was on the same balcony as Charlie Cole, and his roll of film was smuggled out of the country by a French student, concealed in a box of tea.

Photo: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

Charlie Cole, working for Newsweek and on the same balcony as Stuart Franklin, hid his roll of film containing Tank Man in a Beijing Hotel toilet, sacrificing an unused roll of film and undeveloped images of wounded protesters after the PSB raided his room, destroyed the two rolls of film just mentioned and forced him to sign a confession. Cole was able to retrieve the roll and have it sent to Newsweek. He won a World Press Award for a similar photo. It was featured in Life’s “100 Photographs That Changed the World” in 2003.

Photo: Charlie Cole/Newsweek

On June 4, 2009, in connection with the 20th anniversary of the protests, Associated Press reporter Terril Jones revealed a photo he took showing the Tank Man from ground level, a different angle than all of the other known photos of the Tank Man. Jones has written that he was not aware of what he had captured until a month later when printing his photos.

Photo: Terril JonesAssociated Press

Arthur Tsang Hin Wah of Reuters took several shots from room 1111 of the Beijing Hotel, but only the shot of Tank Man climbing the tank was chosen. It was not until several hours later that the photo of the man standing in front of the tank was finally chosen. When the staff noticed Widener’s work, they re-checked Wah’s negative to see if it was of the same moment as Widener's. Later, on March 20, 2013, in an interview by the Hong Kong Press Photographers Association (HKPPA), Wah told the story and added further detail. He told HKPPA that on the night of June 3, 1989, he was beaten by students while taking photos and was bleeding. A “foreign” photographer accompanying him suddenly said “I am not gonna die for your country” and left. Wah returned to the hotel. When he decided to go out again, the public security stopped him, so he stayed in his room, stood next to the window and eventually witnessed the Tank Man and took several shots on June 4, 1989.

Photo: Arthur Tsang Hin Wah/Reuters

Just as powerful as the photos, this video of the Tiananmen Square Tank Man is utterly mesmerizing.

24 Amazing Black and White Photos Capture Daily Life in Shanghai During the First Half of the 20th Century

The development of “Modern Shanghai” started at the beginning of the 20th century. Municipal government and public facilities brought by international settlements; telegrams, telephones, and movies, balls, and other Western lifestyles brought by technological development; these factors collectively created a unique city: Shanghai. Photo is of 1902, of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps proceeding along Nanjing Road, participating in a parade. The Shanghai Volunteer Corps were established in 1853, with the purpose of protecting foreigners against the chaos of war. (Photo source: Shanghai: 1842-2010, Portrait of a Great City Post Wave Publishing)

Photo is of 1906, Shanghai’s business street. At the time, Shanghai had already become the most bustling city in China’s East and even the entire country, with flourishing commerce. Getty/UIG

Due to the needs of trade communications and the development of telegraph technology, Shanghai’s banking business developed quickly, already becoming one of the Far East’s financial hubs by the start of the 20th century. Photo is of 1913, inside the International Savings Society on Shanghai’s Avenue Edward (today’s Yan’an East Road). The International Savings Society was established by the French in October 1912, where it operated until 1937 when it was outlawed by the Nationalist government. (Photo source: Shanghai: 1842-2010, Portrait of a Great City Post Wave Publishing)

Apart from feelings of unfairness brought by the foreign concessions, Shanghai locals also accepted the dividends brought by the foreign concessions. It became China’s fastest developing city at the beginning of the 20th century, escaping the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and Boxers catastrophes, the people here also being the very first to experience a true modern city, experience the media, advertisements, films, high-level education, etc. Photo is of Shanghai in the early 20th century, near the Hongkou market, where everyday were many local fishermen, peasant farmers, and butchers came to sell their goods. Corbis

1907, workers for The Shanghai Electric Construction Co. Ltd. on Nanjing Road laying streetcar trolley rails. This was Shanghai’s first railed streetcar line, that ran mostly along the business street, from Jingan Temple to the Shanghai Club Building, a total of 6.04 kilometers, its main stop located at the Shanghai Club Building. (Photo source: Shanghai: 1842-2010, Portrait of a Great City Post Wave Publishing)

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Beautiful Color Photos That Capture Daily Life in Shanghai in 1945-46

Here is a beautiful color photo collection that shows Shanghai in the middle of 1940s.

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