Time travelling in China

When most people travel, they think of travelling in space. Whether it’s hiking through a national park or learning about a distant culture, it’s usually about the destination. This time, I decided to travel in time. Here are some scenes from China as they looked over the past hundred years. The old pictures were pulled from various books and websites. I then re-took each of them, matching the angle and focal length as closely as possible.

It’s interesting to see what humans are able to change and what humans are utterly incapable of changing. On one hand, a city may rise out of nowhere in just a matter of a decade or two, showing how powerful China’s economy has become, and how advanced engineering has enabled us to build so rapidly. At the same time, the profile of the mountains and rivers don’t budge, a constant reminder that we are still powerless compared to Mother Nature.