Modern China

Beijing
1910
Silent
8m

Extraordinary and exquisite views of life and landscape in Beijing during the late Qing dynasty.

These extraordinary views of life and landscape in Beijing were filmed during the last years of China's Qing dynasty, before the 1911 Xinhai Revolution overthrew imperial rule. The focus is on everyday life, and the views of hawkers, labourers, traders, and artisans reveal the city's vibrant street culture. Especially striking is the shot of a barber preening his client's 'Manchu queue' hairstyle.

The film is the surviving part of an epic – but unrealised – travelogue shot on over 7,000ft of film over 12 months. But most of that original footage never even left China – through bad luck, incompetence, or both (the producer, Charles Urban, subsequently sacked the photographer) more than 90% was lost or proved to be unusable. The footage had a long life in film catalogues and was in distribution at least until 1919, along the way acquiring the alternative title 'In Quaint Pekin'.

China on Film

Travel back in time to a lost China with this collection of extraordinary, rare and beautiful travelogues, newsreels and home movies from the first half of the 20th century.

See bustling, cosmopolitan Shanghai in 1901. Wander the streets around the Qianmen, Beijing, in 1910. Cruise Hangzhou's picturesque canals in 1925. Visit China's great cities - Hong Kong, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Kashgar, Kunming, Suzhou, Tianjin - before concrete expressways and steel-and-glass towers transformed their skylines. And discover rural China almost untouched by modernity, as farmhands bend their backs in paddy fields. In an odyssey embracing the exotic and the everyday, these remarkable films - many of them never published before - will guide you through thousands of miles of Chinese landscape and 50 years of history.

This is a unique and exceptional visual history of China - captured by a wealth of different filmmakers, from professionals to intrepid tourists, colonial-era ex-pats and Christian missionaries. Western filmmakers were visiting China years before any Chinese native first used a film camera. Yes, this is a China seen through Western eyes, reflecting European attitudes and expectations. But even so, it's a rare and fascinating record of a country since changed almost beyond recognition.