Historical Photos of Teochew

Across three chapters, Traveling, Landscape, and Figures, this book creates a photographic history of Teochew (today’s Chaozhou), Guangdong Province, with nearly a century of old photos taken between the second half of the 19th Century and early 20th Century. Accompanying maps help readers find the sites where the photos were taken.

The photos are organized in light of the passage of time since 1870, when John Thomson (1837-1921), a famous British photographer, shot his first picture there. In the decades that followed, a number of missionaries, such as Lilias Graham, passed through and captured precious historical images. During the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, Sekino Tadashi and Tokiwa Daijo, wellknown architectural historians from Japan, visited Teochew and took a number of photos of places of historical interest such as Kaiyuan Temple from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and the Memorial Temple to Han Yu, a Tangdynasty literary figure. Later, people turned their lens to frame images of ordinary people.

“It’s about the visible history of Teochew,” declared the author in the preface.

Chaozhou, a city located at the easternmost tip of Guangdong, has a history of over 2,000 years. As one of the cultural hubs of the province, it has been hailed as an ancient cultural city. “These old photos have value above and beyond photography,” asserts Zhang Zhongzhi, a senior editor of the book. “More than just depicting the contemporary history of the city, they showcase the humanitarian appeal of southern China during the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).”

Chen Pingyuan, an eminent scholar and professor at the Department of Chinese Language and Literature of Peking University, was honored to preface the book. “Chaozhou was once a global leader, but nobody knows when and why the city became increasingly conservative and lonely, which piqued my interest. Things have changed with the passage of time: Chaozhou has experienced a resurgence, but it’s necessary to keep in mind what it endured in the past. It seems as if these photos lead us through a century of disturbances. How do those who care about the city avoid getting sucked into a whirlpool of emotion?”

Ding Quan, a native of Chaozhou, is a photojournalist with Nanfang Daily, a famous financial and economic Chinese publication, and a photographer specializing in wildlife. He has collected these old photos since 2009.