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China Focus: China's 75 years of changes documented by photos

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E-mail Xinhua, September 29, 2024

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By Xinhua writers Bai Xu, Yue Yuanyuan and Qiang Lijing

BEIJING, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- Bai Yaoqin's first photo was taken shortly after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

"It was chilly, and I was wearing a long robe," recalled the 80-year-old grandmother in Beijing. She was just five years old when she posed for the photo with her elder sister, a way they used to express their joy of liberation.

As she flipped through her photo albums, she marveled at the big changes in the country reflected in the pictures taken throughout the decades. "The changes are earthshaking," she said.

To ordinary Chinese people today, photo-taking has transformed from once a luxurious activity to a common practice. From children to senior citizens, they can easily capture any moment of their life with a click on their phones. The myriad photos since 1949 together bore witness to China's development in the past 75 years.

RECORDING A SPECIAL MOMENT

Unfortunately, Bai's first photo was lost. However, she managed to preserve her vocational school graduation picture, a black-and-white one taken in 1966 at the Tian'anmen Square. This is her first photo taken outdoors.

In the yellowed photo, 42 students, dressed in dull-colored coats and trousers stared at or smiled shyly to the camera, with the short-haired Bai in the first row.

"We rarely took photos at that time, but graduation was such a big occasion that we thought the Tian'anmen Square was the most suitable place," she said.

The Tian'anmen Square, located at the center of Beijing, holds an important place in the hearts of the Chinese people. Li Jun, a 68-year-old retired photographer from the Da Bei Photo Studio, which boasts a history of 103 years, can still recall the long queues waiting to take photos at the square.

"Back then people had no cameras, so having photographers taking a photo at the Tian'anmen Square was the wish of many people," said the shutterbug who started working at the Tian'anmen Square in 1978. He said that back then most Chinese people dressed in simple garments with monotone colors, such as black, white, green and dark blue.

According to Li, a small black-and-white photo cost 0.4 yuan (about 0.06 U.S. dollars), including the postage. The customers coming from other parts of the country typically couldn't wait for the photo to be developed, so mailing was necessary. Considering that most Chinese people at that time earned just over 30 yuan a month, the price wasn't insignificant.

At the peak season, a photographer could consume about 40 films, which means more than a dozen photographers there took photos for thousands of visitors a day.

Traveling was not common at that time. "The customers were mostly on work trips or visiting their relatives or friends in Beijing," he said.

There were also passengers transferring in Beijing, who would rush to the square about three kilometers away from the railway station for a quick snap.

Li recalled meeting a young soldier whose uniform was drenched with sweat as he ran towards the iconic spot. "He said he only had a couple of hours between the trains but wanted to take a photo," the photographer explained. "I had a long queue of customers waiting, but I couldn't let him down." So he asked one of his colleagues to help the soldier fulfill his wish.

TAKING PICTURES A COMMONPLACE

In 1978, China launched its reform and opening up, leading to fast growth of the country's economy and marked improvement of the people's livelihood. The saving deposits of urban and rural residents increased from 21.1 billion yuan at the end of 1978 to 380.2 billion yuan at the end of 1988.

Before the advent of color photography, Da Bei used to offer services dyeing photos for customers. Customers usually had their black-and-white photos dyed to decorate their rooms, placing them on walls or desks.

According to Li Jun, the photographer, they normally asked customers what colors they would like to have for their clothes.

Following the adoption of colored film, the photo studio launched a color photograph service in the 1980s, which was welcomed by customers.

Li Jiangxia traveled to Beijing in the summer of 1987 from her hometown in northwest China's Shaanxi Province. Then 25, she visited multiple tourist attractions in the city and had a picture taken at the Tian'anmen Square. It was a colored photo. Against the backdrop of the blue sky and red Tian'anmen Rostrum, she wore a long white dress.

The photo cost her three yuan, one-14th of her monthly salary. "Considering that it was the first time I traveled, the photo was not expensive at all," she said. "After all, I needed something to record my journey."

People would go to a photo studio to mark the important moments in their lives, such as birthday celebrations, family reunions and weddings.

Meng Jing, 45, had her birthday photos taken in Da Bei each year of her childhood. "It was an inseparable part of my annual celebration," said Meng.

As incomes rose, cameras became more accessible to families, making photography increasingly commonplace.

Bai Yaoqin also took a photo at the Tian'anmen Square in the early 1990s with her husband, using their own camera. She was wearing a black jacket while her husband was in a long trench coat. Other visitors behind them are seen wearing blue or red down jackets.

OPTIONS MORE DIVERSIFIED

The following years saw China's economy soar.

China's GDP more than doubled in the past decade, rapidly expanding to 121 trillion yuan in 2022 from 59.3 trillion yuan in 2013, with an average annual growth rate of over 6 percent.

In the past decade, China's share of the world economy has increased from 12.3 percent to over 18 percent, with its annual contribution to global growth averaging over 30 percent.

As people abandoned their pocket cameras for modern options, photography blossomed into a popular hobby among many Chinese people. Meng Jing bought a Nikon D80 digital camera in 2006, four years after she graduated from university. It cost her 10,000 yuan, equivalent to her two months' salary. With this camera, she traveled to many places across the country and overseas tourist destinations to take photos.

Today it is no longer just a hobby for young people: at many scenic attractions in China it is common to see many elderly people holding a professional camera, practicing techniques they learned online or from training centers.

For their own portraits people have more diversified preferences: Meng used to have her photos taken in studios where she was in evening dresses that feature a Western style. But in recent years she has been fascinated by Hanfu, China's traditional attire.

Showing a Xinhua reporter her photos in an elaborate red dress of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), she said: "travel is pretty easy these days. Earlier this year, I went to Luoyang for a weekend specifically to capture these images at various sites."

Luoyang, an ancient city in central China's Henan Province, is about 800 kilometers away from Beijing, but the high-speed train ride took her less than four hours to get there. The cost of service, including costume-renting, make-up and a professional photographer was about 400 yuan. This is quite affordable compared with her monthly salary, which now exceeds 20,000 yuan.

Li Jiangxia, now retired, enjoys traveling both within China and abroad to countries such as Britain, France and Belgium, capturing photos with her phone. She also loves dancing and has joined a community club. This spring, she bought a set of Hanfu and often shares photos and videos of herself dancing in the dress on her social media account.

Seeing people's high demand for Hanfu photos, Da Bei launched the costume-renting and photo-taking service earlier this year. Photographers could go with customers to attractions such as the Temple of Heaven or the Beihai Park to take pictures.

"Young people are no longer satisfied with taking photos of a fixed pattern," said Li Liting, chairwoman of the Da Bei Photo Studio. "They would like to have their real happy moments recorded outdoors, rather than posing for photos inside a studio."

However, she noted that services for vintage photos, including the black-and-white ones, still remain, with parents coming to take pictures for their children in the same style as their own childhood photos.

"Each year I bring my son to Da Bei for his birthday photo, just as what I had 40 years ago," Meng Jing said, adding that she also took her parents there for family photos occasionally.

Li told Xinhua that they also consider restoring the dyeing service, so that customers could have more choices for vintage photos.

"I believe that no matter how developed the society is and what new technology may come out, photo-taking is an irreplaceable service," she said. "Our photos have recorded the lives of Chinese people in the past decades, and we will continue to do so for their children, in the years to come." Enditem

(Xinhua writers Ding Jing and Ren Chao contributed to the story.)