By the end of the Qing Dynasty, camera technology had been introduced to the mainland, so people living in modern times can also get an in-depth understanding of the social landscape of the last feudal dynasty in Chinese history through these photographs taken in the late Qing Dynasty.
Above, the Imperial Tomb Shinto
Many attentive people who look at the photos of the late Qing Dynasty will find a very interesting question, that is, why are the mountains of the Qing Dynasty bare? You can't think of a reason.
Many photos of the late Qing Dynasty are taken in the scenery of the south of the Yangtze River, and it stands to reason that the climate in the south is warm, and many photos were taken in summer, and the mountains should be lush with vegetation. But the actual situation is that even the 100,000 mountains in Guangxi, which are like spring all year round, are bare in the old photos of the late Qing Dynasty.
Above, Huo went to the grave of the sick.
So, where did the grass and trees on these mountains go? The answer is actually very simple, it is because of the indiscriminate felling of the ancients that there is no grass on these mountains.
The ancients needed firewood and grass to cook for cooking, and there were even woodcutters who made a living by cutting firewood.
The picture above is the view outside Nanjing in the late Qing Dynasty.
Nowadays, people no longer use firewood and grass to cook, because no one has gone up the mountain for a long time in the author's hometown, and even the sheep intestine trail that used to go up the mountain is covered by dense bushes.
Let's take a look at a group of classic old photos of the Qing Dynasty to take you to appreciate some of the social features of the last dynasty of the Qing Dynasty.
The picture above was taken in 1911 at West Lake in Hangzhou. As you can see from the photos, the West Lake at that time was indeed a desolate scene, and the distant hills were also bare, which can be said to be different from the scene of "people conforming to the crowd" in modern West Lake.
This situation is also in line with people's inherent impression of the late Qing Dynasty, that is, decay, barrenness, and lifelessness.
This picture was taken at the end of the Qing Dynasty, and the exact time of shooting is unknown. The photo shows the Great Wall, and it can be seen from the photo that this section of the Great Wall has been significantly damaged. If it was the Ming Dynasty, the imperial court might have funded the repair and reinforcement of the collapsed Great Wall. However, the Qing rulers were nomadic people, so they no longer built the Great Wall, but allowed it to collapse over the years.
From the distant hilltop, you can see that the mountain where the Great Wall is located does not even have some slightly larger shrubs, and it is a completely bare scene.
The photograph was taken in 1872 by the British engineer Child. On his journey to Mongolia, he recorded the majestic sight of the Great Wall at that time. However, due to the sparse vegetation and lack of life on the mountain, it also feels desolate and dilapidated, symbolizing the decline of the late Qing Dynasty.
Old photos of the Shinto statues of the Ming Tombs. Taken at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the picture above looks so desolate and dilapidated that there is not even a single tree in sight. The big trees that people see now were planted after the founding of the People's Republic of China.
This photograph was also taken by the British engineer Child. Since Childe was an engineer hired by the Qing Dynasty at that time, although he did not have an official official title, he was still fortunate to be invited to this wedding.
The bride in the wedding is Zeng Jifen, the beloved daughter of Zeng Guofan, and the groom Nie Jichun was born in the Nie family in Hengshan, and has the reputation of "three generations of Jinshi and two generations of Hanlin". Nie Jichun is Li Hongzhang's right-hand man, and he is also one of the representatives of the Westernization Movement, advocating industry to save the country, and once served as the general office of the Jiangnan Machinery Manufacturing Bureau.