TRAVELS IN CHINA.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Album of 230 photographs recording the adventures of two Western tourists. A collection of 230 vernacular photographs recording a couple's trip to Beijing, Jinan, and Qingdao a decade after the abdication of the last Qing emperor. Arranged chronologically, the album combines landscape and architectural views with candid shots of the travellers and the people they met. The appearance of many easily identifiable landmarks more than compensates for a lack of captions.The travellers begin their holiday in Beijing, recently the site of the May Fourth demonstrations. The first 35 images capture the serenity of the Summer Palace, once an imperial retreat, with images showing the East Palace Gate and the exterior Hall of Joyful Longevity. The visitors strike jaunty individual poses on a stone lion and ride regally on the back of a bronze deer statue. The lady is captured from a distance on a balcony overlooking the Kunming Lake, the largest body of water in the palace complex, with the famous 17-arch bridge visible in the background. Like many before them, these travellers are drawn to such architectural wonders as the Glowing Clouds and Holy Land Archway, as well as the full-size marble boat restored by the Empress Cixi in the 19th century using funds allocated for outfitting a real navy. Several vistas of the lake show its solitude and remoteness - qualities accentuated by the palace's transition in 1914 from a working royal residence into a publicly accessible monument to China's

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.