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.