10 old photos from the late Qing Dynasty restore the life of our ancestors. Is it hard to be a performer?

In winter, a Shandong mother takes her children to shoot hay on the hillside. This group of old photos recording social life scenes in the late Qing Dynasty can, to a certain extent, restore the people's livelihood conditions under the rule of the Empress Dowager Cixi. Many photos make people feel sad after seeing them, and they lament how miserable the lives of our ancestors were.

The husband took his wife back to her natal home. The moment the photographer pressed the shutter, the woman sitting on the mule covered her face with a fan, and her husband subconsciously lowered his straw hat. Their reaction was not surprising. In the late Qing Dynasty, many people regarded cameras as "soul-capturing machines" and believed that taking pictures would take away people's souls and cause death.

A man begging on his knees. He was wearing rags and carrying a pole, with a young child in the front basket and some of his belongings in the back basket. In the late Qing Dynasty, due to the socioeconomic decline, coupled with frequent natural disasters, wars and disputes, more and more people became beggars.

Children performing jugglers on the street. In real life, people who perform in martial arts are not because they are ambitious like the legendary knights, but because they are forced by life. If you lose your home due to natural or man-made disasters, or if your land is annexed and your livelihood is lost, you will choose to venture into the world out of desperation. The audience in the photo are all wearing cotton-padded clothes, while the two performers, one large and one small, are shirtless. This shows how hard it is to do this job!

Police officers in training. The original text of the photo stated that these police officers armed with machetes were hired by Russia. We speculate that they were hired by the Russian concession authorities somewhere and were trained to manage the Chinese people in the concession.

A street vendor selling snacks from a wheelbarrow. Did anyone see what kind of snacks he was selling? I think it looks like a traditional fried dough sheet, called 禃禮儿 in the Beijing-Tianjin area. It is golden in color, crispy and delicious. The stall owner is smiling, which means business is good.

The master who brews potions. There was a pile of animal bones on the stall. He prepared a variety of medicinal materials according to a so-called secret recipe handed down from his ancestors, and boiled them into ointments or decoctions, claiming that they could treat rheumatism, bruises and other diseases. There were many folk secret recipes in the old society, but it is hard to say whether they really have therapeutic effects.