PEKING EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

The Thirties of the Twentieth century are undoubtedly the most interesting with regard to pre-revolutionary China. Peking was a must for all the great journalists of the world, also for the most celebrated writers and famous photographers. Between 1925 and 1935 some foreign photographers set up shop in the city that was no longer a capital and which had resumed the name Peiping (Northern Peace) after the Nationalists once again made southern Nanking the capital. These photographers were American, English and Japanese. Others, although not permanently settled there, wandered through its dilapidated streets and documented the ruin of what had been the capital of the old Heavenly Empire. The impression one has today upon observing those images, is of a certain sad deterioration. Peking was degenerating, abandoned to the looting of robbers and neglected by everyone. The author has collected together the chorus of voices of the visitors of that time, who afterwards wrote down their disconsolate impressions. He has also collected a series of pictures which accompany those accounts well. They are not, however, just snapshots of urban and monumental deterioration: they are photos which also show the "modernisation" of the Chinese, who had discovered photography and were willing to be immortalised, often dressing in European style.