Time Travel With This Vast Photographic Archive of China

Bored with scrolling through Instagram, WeChat Moments, and Facebook? Sick of seeing the same food pictures, dog snaps, and gym selfies over and over again? Fed up with beautifying filters and oversaturated sunset pics from places you'd rather be? What you need is a dose of archival pictures, and the Bristol University is ready to deliver.

First conceived in 2006, the Historical Photographs of China online archive is the fruit of a large-scale project that collects, researches, digitizes, and publishes historical photographs of China. The images largely come from private collections held outside of mainland China, from families with some historical link to the country, and many photographs having been handed down through the generations. 

There are thousands and thousands of images in the collection, with some of the earliest going back to the late 19th century, offering a fascinating glimpse into China's past.

Writer, history teacher, Beijing by Foot tour guide, and long-time Beijinger contributor Jeremiah Jenne uses the archive often in both his work as a historian and tour guide, sometimes sharing pictures from the collection on his Twitter feed.

'Woman with tweezers making a chenille souvenir' by Hedda Morrison

While we are naturally most interested in Beijing, the photo archive includes collections from all over China including major cities like Shanghai and Hong Kong, but also some of the lesser-known inland provinces.

'Three camels with panniers, Peking' by Donald Mennie

But if you're looking for something specific, Jenne warns that the photographs are generally uploaded to the database with keywords based upon the original captions of the photographs, and given how transliterations of Chinese terms have changed in English over the time, they may not match up to what you'd expect. For example, when searching for images of Beijing, don't forget to also search 'Peking.'