Serene: A boat sails down a river in the Jiangsu province of China in 1946. The placid scene belies the rebellion, occupation, civil war and natural disasters of the previous half-century
Former US president and civil war general Ulysses S Grant meets Chinese viceroy Li Hung Chang in Tianjin, 1879. The two enjoyed friendly relations and discussed how to develop China and improve her trade with the world
A Russian soldier talks with Chinese camel owners in Beijing in 1901. Beijing was one of the many Chinese cities that remained under occupation by foreign powers in the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion of 1900
The whipping or flogging with a paddle, known in Chinese as 'bastinado', was one of the many forms of corporal punishment employed in Qing China to maintain civil obedience
Boxer Prisoners in Tianjin in 1901. Their captors - soldiers of the 6th US Cavalry - can be seen in the background
Armed guards escort carts through the southern gate of the Imperial City in Beijing, 1901. The archway was considered the ceremonial gateway to China
On the prowl: The police force of turn-of-the-century Canton used these bridges to patrol the roofs of the city at night
East meets West: Children at the Peking Christian Mission School, in modern-day Beijing, form a dragon's head for the American photographer, Carlton H Graves
'Ladies of the Palace' photographed by Frank Carpenter and his daughter Frances. The picture shows the rich detail of court fashion during the last years of the Manchu Qing dynasty
A Manchu girl shows off the dress typical of the ruling Qing dynasty. The picture is from the mid nineteenth-century collection of William Lockhart, a British missionary who founded the first Western hospital in Shanghai
This picture of two singing girls in Hong Kong was one of a series of posed shots by American photographer Benjamin W. Kilburn, which purported to show a slice of Chinese life around the turn of the century
The last Emperor of China: Pu Yi (left) reigned from the age of 2 in 1908 until the declaration of a Republic in 1912. In 1922 Wan Rong (right) was chosen to be his Empress. Ignored by her powerless husband, she would eventually die from malnutrition and opium withdrawal in a squalid Communist prison
The hardship of the country: Workers stand barefoot at the mouth of a coalmine in the hills of rural China
A bride wears a basket in lieu of a veil to obscure her face before her wedding. It was Chinese custom to not allow anyone to see the bride until she was secure in her new husband's home
A group of five men proudly display a leopard they have shot in a mission compound. The photographer, an American clergyman was killed by bandits while ministering to Christians in 1945
The bustle of the city: Hong Kong's Queen's Road on Chinese New Year's Day 1902
The Chinese labourers in this South African gold mine show the global reach of Chinese emigrants, driven from their homeland by famine and social upheaval
A toy vendor shows off his wares in San Francisco's Chinatown around 1900. Immigration controls and strict marriage laws meant that the two Chinese children in this picture would have been an unusual sight
On a Washington airstrip in 1939 Colonel Roscoe Turner presents Chinese aviatrix Hilda Yen with the aeroplane that would nearly kill her in a crash a month later
A military vehicle makes it way through a mountainous region of the Jiangsu province, 1946
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