A hundred years ago, the French took a set of real photos of the Qing Dynasty, how did you feel after you saw it?
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, photography technology was officially introduced to China, although at first there was some fear of this novelty, but with the development of time, people slowly accepted this new way of recording, and even Empress Dowager Cixi became obsessed with taking pictures. One of the French photographers, Kahn, took many rare images of the Qing Dynasty at that time, and the photos that have been more than a hundred years have finally been exposed.
Although a lot of Western things were introduced to China at the end of the Qing Dynasty, there was still some resistance to the technology of taking pictures. Because people at that time could not understand how images were transmitted through a small machine, they thought that this machine could take away people's minds, and the images in the photos were their souls.
Therefore, most people will generally choose to dodge when they face the camera for the first time, and then secretly observe with their eyes. And when people begin to understand the actual role of this thing, they are more curious. In addition to curiosity, the qing dynasty people in the camera are more overwhelmed, and only some daring people will come forward to watch.
And the people in those shots have a common feature, that is, the skin color is very deep, which can be seen that the ordinary people at that time were still basically based on manual labor. When it comes to the image of appearance, the side that people are most impressed by is the braid of the Qing Dynasty. It is true that men at that time had a braid on their heads, but the braid was not as thick and long as in the film and television drama. The real braid is just a very thin strip and looks very messy.
Because the braids of the Qing Dynasty people at that time were not often groomed, the better people might be able to take care of them once a month, and the ordinary people might not deal with the braids once a year. There are some workers who engage in manual labor who even wrap their braids directly around their heads instead of letting it fall vertically naturally. In order not to affect the work, they may always leave it alone.
Most of these people were laborers on the docks, which was the most work done by poor families in the coastal areas at that time. They were usually ragged and hungry, looking as if they hadn't eaten in days. Their daily life is to do a lot of portering, moving things off the ship and moving things off the dock to the boat, numbly repeating the same action.
And because they are only engaged in manual labor, their income is also very low. At that time, in order to save money for the family, many people could only eat some rotten vegetables, and they could only eat some animal offal that others did not want to open a meat, but for these ordinary people, it was a rare opportunity to improve their lives. A bowl of white porridge that can be eaten in ordinary life is a very happy thing for them.
Compared with the ordinary people on the street, those Qing nobles are very numb. They couldn't see any change in look in front of the camera, just reclining on the bed smoking a big cigarette. Sometimes they even put the tool in front of the camera for them to look at carefully, completely unaware of the harm that this thing brings to their bodies. I didn't know that I looked skinny, and there was no difference between me and a skeleton.
And some Qing Dynasty aristocrats who did not smoke these things seemed much more normal, except for clothing, there was not much difference between them and modern people. Women are very fair-skinned, men look very healthy, and even some are fat and strong, and the life of those eight flags is even more luxurious.
Nobles like them didn't have to work at all, and the court exploited the money of the lower classes, and then it was used to raise these beasts. Every day is to walk the birds, listen to the drama, find a three or five friends to fool around. These so-called nobles are completely parasites of the Qing Dynasty, constantly eating into the nutrition of the country, making the entire Qing Dynasty even more ruined.
As Cixi, who controlled the actual power of the late Qing Dynasty for nearly 50 years, she was the biggest cancer in the country. As the ruler at that time, Cixi was naturally the first to come into contact with these new things. Moreover, Cixi was also an avid photo lover, leaving hundreds of photos among the Manchu nobles alone. Moreover, Cixi not only likes to take pictures, but also has great confidence in her appearance and likes to give her photos to foreign diplomats. Nowadays, there are still many photos of Cixi in foreign countries, making her a well-known "celebrity" at home and abroad.
And Kahn, a French photographer, was also different from many other foreigners at that time, preferring to record the real impact of some foreigners on the Qing Dynasty at that time, rather than the life of those upper-class people in the Qing Dynasty. So he also took a lot of architectural photographs of the Qing Dynasty, and some foreigners in the Qing Dynasty.
More than a hundred years ago, the Tian'an City Gate was actually not as magnificent as it is today, the entire city wall was very dark, the wall surface was also damaged by a lot of artillery fire, and the invasion of foreign troops made the imperial city become like a relic. The arrow tower used for defense on the city wall also lost its role, and ordinary people could even come down from the city wall, and there was no difference between them and above the street. Compared with the dilapidated qing dynasty buildings, some foreigners opened churches and Western-style buildings in China are intact and have not been destroyed by their own people.
The Qing Dynasty case-handling official palace is not much better than the city wall, and it is not as grand as that of the film and television drama, and the so-called public hall is just a long table paved with cloth. Those servants were not all standing on both sides, but more were standing behind the county grandmaster, who was actually mainly kneeling prisoners and ordinary people watching, looking very serious.
And those Qing officials could only be respectful when receiving visiting French diplomats, while those Frenchmen were all in a condescending posture, and some diplomats' wives even openly insulted the Qing people at the gate of the yamen. They deliberately threw food on the ground like they were feeding pigeons in a park, and then let the children and beggars come forward and grab it, as if they were playing with small animals. It can be said that the ordinary people of the Qing Dynasty were very difficult and had no human rights at all in the eyes of foreigners. Seeing these images can only lament the hard-won good life today.
