- 20/06/2025
China through the Lenses is a documentary which tells stories from the perspective of foreign photographers who came to the People’s Republic of China in different periods, presents the theme by "images through lenses", and vividly shows the tremendous changes from the founding of the People’s Republic of China to today. It covers the material and spiritual life of Chinese people, the lively construction and blooming development of Chinese society, and presents an objective, realistic and diversified image of China.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:01Arriving in China and pressing their shutters.
00:06From innocent children to vibrant young men.
00:10From heavy traffic to massive buildings.
00:13From hard work to impressive strides.
00:19What monumental changes have photos been able to record?
00:25They record the changes across time
00:27and uncover China in an instant.
00:30This is a story of the times as told through pictures.
01:01Because I was drawn, I was attracted to China because of a dream.
01:07And I told them about this dream and they said, have you been to China?
01:19Because that sounds to us like China.
01:21A country that very few people back in my homeland knew anything about.
01:36The 35 years, I have seen the people of this country and I've seen it honestly.
01:46The lifestyles have improved incredibly.
01:48Creatively.
01:55I came to China to basically tell a story to the world.
01:59I go into the mode of telling my life story here in China.
02:05For the soya, is it because of China?
02:06Yeah, I use soya in almost everything.
02:15Peter Crosby, an American photographer and international cyclist, has traveled across China on his bike twice.
02:32This is from Uruguay, an artist in Uruguay in 2013.
02:45But I love it because it's a leap.
02:49Someone is taking a leap.
02:51And so that's what this van is.
02:54A leap.
02:56Going to China for the first time.
02:58A leap.
03:02In 1994, 39-year-old Peter first came to China.
03:08At that time, China was the kingdom of bicycles in the eyes of the Western world.
03:13And then there would just be this sort of stream of people riding bicycles, the big old say goodbye and forever.
03:26And they would be riding quietly, side by side, maybe a bell every once in a while.
03:37A woman might be sitting on the back, you know, hiding on the side.
03:40Maybe they're hiding on the handlebars.
03:55Peter, who loves cycling, began to plan a trip across China.
03:59And he used a bike made in China to make it happen.
04:02I put on a bus and then Yicheng took the ferry up the Yangtze because the Three Gorges Dam, they were just starting to build that.
04:21In the 1990s, China ushered in a tide of construction, ranging from world-class water conservation projects to small roads connecting urban and rural areas.
04:36Peter was often surprised at each place he visited.
04:38This is a shared memory of people at the time who worked hard to build their homes.
04:58Peter started his journey in Beijing and finally arrived in Hong Kong on a bike made in China.
05:04He cycled more than 3,000 kilometers through cities and villages.
05:18Along the way, Peter recorded the China he saw with his eyes and his camera and in the 19,400 photos and 15 diaries which Peter brought back to the United States.
05:29A country that very few people back in my homeland knew anything about.
05:55When we crossed the border from Mongolia into China, the first words I heard, this gentleman, wearing a white shirt, shook hands with me and said, welcome to China.
06:12Friendliness and warmth were British photographer Bruce Connolly's first impressions of China.
06:19He came to China seven years earlier than Peter.
06:25Unlike Peter's way of observing China by bike, Bruce chose the train as his means of transportation.
06:31That was really what started me in 1987, just this desire to do a great railway journey, one of the great railway journeys of the world, because I was a train fan.
06:44In 1987, Bruce decided to plan a train trip through China.
06:54I get people saying to me, for example, Chinese people are always smiling.
06:59Now that I found really quite funny, you know, because these are the expressions you get, you're capturing moments.
07:10You know, I've often said a photograph is worth a thousand words.
07:14In the 1980s and 1990s, trains were the primary mode of long distance transportation in China.
07:25Before and after the Spring Festival, there would be a nationwide traffic peak, which is known as the largest periodic human migration phenomenon in human history.
07:35It was a task, it was an endurance at Spring Festival, to go home, the college students all making their journey back, back to the towns and the villages.
07:45And they all tried to speak to you, you know, they all say, hello, hello, hello, hello, you know.
07:49Bruce went all the way south, recording the real China along the way.
07:54So the Yangtze was a living river, all the way from where, you know, navigation could come in.
08:00A boat down at Chongqing. And here was the bridge, way before the city, that was carrying the railway line across.
08:10Everything else was ferry boats, last in Chongqing.
08:15And I remember writing about this in my notebook, how we were coming down the river.
08:21And as we came down here, I remember writing.
08:23This was, well, an awful lot of the people who depended on the river.
08:30People who were working as the bang bang men, working in the docks, working on the boats.
08:34Many families lived here and they were tied in with the river.
08:38After completing this journey across China, Bruce returned to Britain with true images of China.
08:55I was going back to the UK, I was giving many talks.
08:59Every day I'm putting photographs of the China that I know.
09:04The China that I see.
09:06In the following years, Peter never forgot his experience of cycling through China.
09:31Then, in 2021, he had a wild idea.
09:36To return to China and rediscover the country.
09:42I said, the first thing was, really, I haven't been riding a bicycle for years.
09:47I really want to ride a bicycle?
09:50Like thousands of miles again?
09:53I'm 60 years old.
10:00Once again, Peter chose to explore China on a bike.
10:18What shocked Peter most is that in the former kingdom of bicycles, the biggest change is not only the means of transportation, but overall life philosophy.
10:34In fact, besides the evolving use of bicycles, many Chinese elements commonly found in the past have been changing quietly throughout the new era.
10:47They have not faded away among the urbanization, but are kept fresh in the memory of the city.
10:56And we were here, what, December 2019?
11:12I wonder if the tea house is still here.
11:14Oh, wow, here we are, here we are.
11:17This is definitely a place to come and get your picture taken.
11:19Take care.
11:22This is a unique tea house in Chongqing.
11:27Today, Canadian photographer Alex, with his wife Juliet, and his Chinese colleague Zhang Gao Wei, come here for tea.
11:37Which one did we leave here three years ago?
11:40Wow, wow.
11:41These are all the locals' glasses, or the teapots and glasses that they left here.
11:44Make yourself at home, I guess.
11:46In 2019, Alex came to China as a common tourist.
11:53After traveling to Chongqing, Alex decided to settle here.
12:03I've been to over 250 cities in the world.
12:07I've traveled to over 107 countries since I started traveling.
12:11And there is no other city like Chongqing.
12:14It's a city that gets inside you.
12:19Whether it's its beautiful bridges, its amazing infrastructure with monorails, its fantastic mountains.
12:26There's so much about this city to explore.
12:28Beijing, for example, is also one of these things that, you know, when I arrived in Beijing, there were three subway lines.
12:39And now there's 22 tourism.
12:43If you're not born and raised in China, or in my case, lived here for a long time,
12:47you would absolutely think this is an insane amount of transformation.
12:55Actually, I read a book from China in the 80s, 90s, and 90s.
13:01I started to understand China deeply.
13:05I thought, how could it change so much?
13:07People really wanted to start to try to understand China, because they could feel China rising and coming.
13:20So, I felt my role as a photographer was to help people understand the changes taking place within China.
13:38It starts at 6 in the evening.
13:51The most spectacular site in Beijing is the peak of urban traffic, in addition to the towering buildings at sunset.
13:57It starts at 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 6th.
14:06Then, the change of the city is too big.
14:13Tonight, Heijian Tao is going to host a European golf tournament,
14:18which has become his favourite since entering middle age.
14:20Which is a European golf tournament, which is not a great age.
14:253, 2, 1, go.
14:29Today, we are going to be a partner with the Pei Gien Thal.
14:31It's the weekend.
14:32It's the weekend, as we come to Paris,
14:35we're going to be a part of the Paris, Paris.
14:37We know the word used to be a friend.
14:40You are a friend.
14:41Today, we bring out the match,
14:43we're going to be a part of Paris,
14:45the European golf tournament,
14:47the European golf tournament.
14:50This is a photo published on a famous American magazine in 1979.
14:57And the boy is Heijian Tao, who was eight years old at the time.
15:02When Heijian Tao and his parents reached the Great Wall, they met James Anderson, an American photographer.
15:32There was a picture on the other side of the camera, and he found a picture on the other side of the ocean.
15:39Anderson then took out a bottle of Coke he carried with him and gave it to Heijian Tao.
15:45This boy, born and raised in Beijing, drank soda that came from the other side of the ocean for the first time.
15:52When I was drinking, I felt it was not good.
15:55So I felt like I had a very soft feeling.
15:59You can see, this bottle is also a原 bottle, so it was from the United States.
16:03From the perspective of this Chinese boy, he could not adapt to such a strange drink quickly.
16:10After Heijian Tao finished the Coke, Anderson captured this moment.
16:14A little boy in typical Oriental clothing of the time, with a commodity from the Western world, formed a strong contrast in this photo.
16:24There were a lot of things that were made from the first cup of Coke.
16:29So the real change was from the first cup of Coke.
16:30That's right.
16:31That's right.
16:32That's right.
16:33That's right.
16:34That's right.
16:35From that time on, commodities from all over the world began to flood into China.
16:44And many foreign photographers focused their cameras on ads in the streets of China.
16:49This is an old advertisement in Shenyang in 1988.
17:01This is 1987, and consumption habits had changed greatly.
17:08In the 1980s and 90s, as people's lives became richer, cameras were entering ordinary homes.
17:19Owning a camera was then considered very fashionable.
17:26People began to take pictures of things they found meaningful.
17:29The prevalence of cameras helped preserve social life from that time in the form of images.
17:35Right, so what happened in the 80s is that people were able to get their own camera.
17:42So before in the 70s that was still very expensive, it was more for the professionals.
17:46And of course in the 80s and 90s, especially from the 1970s, 80s and 90s, like that is a timeframe that I'm interested in.
17:55Ruben Lundgren, a two-meter-tall Dutch photographer, is an expert at capturing images of different times.
18:12He has visited many Chinese cities and found that the current photographic works could not show the time dimension of such changes.
18:23But many precious photos recorded people's living conditions in a certain period.
18:28If I want to tell that story, I need to collect a lot of different types of pictures to tell that story in a fun way, in a meaningful way.
18:37Lundgren realized that, to discover an interesting China, he must first transform his own identity from a photographer to a photo collector, which Lundgren calls a photo detective.
18:54So, yeah, photo detective and photographer is not, it's sometimes just the same.
19:01But with the Chinese photo book, it's also a way of telling, you know, Chinese history for a foreign reader from the perspective of the photo book for a Western audience.
19:10And hopefully that will also improve the kind of understanding between, you know, nations.
19:16Every weekend, Lundgren would visit the Panjia Yuan antique market in Beijing to buy old photos. Many merchants here know him.
19:30It's been a long time. It's a long time. You have a new image.
19:34Yes, yes.
19:35There are.
19:36There are.
19:37There are.
19:38There are.
19:39Is it a photo that you can see?
19:40Yes.
19:41Let's see if you can see it.
19:42Let's see if you can see it.
19:43Oh, it's a beautiful.
19:44Oh, it's a beautiful.
19:45Recently, Lundgren has been preparing a new album, which he calls Dream Machine.
19:52It's going to be a book that has pictures of people in photo studios in which they stand in front of a backdrop of a fake car or a fake helicopter or a tank and an airplane.
20:11And it's, it's such a adorable, it's going to be a very adorable little book that these dream machines or the machines that were popular in certain decades are reflected in the pictures as well.
20:26Today, such scenes no longer exist in reality.
20:29Due to new affluent lifestyles, people no longer need special props to show their dreams.
20:35People just need to raise their mobile phones to take pictures of amazing things or scenes.
20:40Dreams have already turned into reality and become part of daily life.
20:45Yeah, in the society we live in now, it has a complete different meaning because now people just take the airplane, they take a car, they adjust to modern times easily because they're, they're, they can absorb this modern technology.
21:00And that's not just something from the last decade or so, it's something that is already, like, it's in the Chinese identity in some kind of way.
21:07Marui Jing is the Chinese name of Samani Kin, who is an international student from Tajikistan.
21:24Three years ago, his parents sent him to China to study photography at Beijing Film Academy.
21:30Marui Jing likes traveling in China during holidays and recording his feelings about China with a camera.
21:51Marui Jing is the Chinese name of Taiwan.
21:58This is Phuken to a friend's house.
22:05And it's in重庆,
22:08貴州 and Sichuan
22:09the three places.
22:11The last place I've been to is
22:12in New Zealand.
22:16Because I'm from Tajikistan,
22:19I haven't been back home for three years.
22:21So I'm going to find my own home in China.
22:25I'm going to show my own clothes and life in the country.
22:34Although he only stayed there for one night,
22:37the familiar customs made him feel at home.
22:40This was also the most homesick night for him
22:42in the past three years.
22:46Back in Beijing,
22:48Ma Rui Jing began to think about
22:50the theme of his photography assignment
22:51for the new semester.
22:53A book recording China
22:55authored by an Italian named Adriano Madaro
22:58inspired him.
22:59I read a book in the past 10 years ago
23:03about the Chinese book.
23:06It gave me a view of the mind
23:07that it was in this field.
23:10The people who sell things,
23:12handing things,
23:12the people who sell things,
23:13the people who sell things.
23:15They're all on their own
23:16or their own.
23:18It's the most simple level, less Americanized concept of South Korea.
23:31I think youth is not a spiritual level.
23:35When you go to China, for me, it's creative.
23:39Just think about it.
23:41While browsing through the works of other photographers online, Alex accidentally comes across a group of photos.
23:53Do you know where is it?
23:55Is that in Jeifeng Bay?
23:57Yes.
23:58Wow.
23:59You can't really see the sky because it's all skyscrapers.
24:03Beautiful.
24:04Beautiful colors, huh?
24:05It's 30 years.
24:07The blues, the yellows, I mean.
24:09Chongqing was isolated, very isolated from the rest of China because of geography.
24:15This city, they called it Mountain City, because literally the hills rose straight up from the river.
24:22It created tremendous physical challenges.
24:28These photos were taken by Bruce Connolly in 1994.
24:33In this photo taken by Bruce, a porter looks into the distance while walking down the steps.
24:39In that moment, the mountain and the city have merged on the steep steps, with the man carrying his livelihood over his shoulders.
24:46The first time I came to Chongqing, the bong bong men, at the time we didn't know what they were.
24:55We could see they were carrying heavy loads of goods up and down the stairs.
25:01I mean, this is not an easy city to even walk in.
25:05And that has always stayed in our mind.
25:08This is iconic, I think, to Chongqing.
25:10Yes.
25:11These are the people that have built this city.
25:17From Bruce's photos of old Chongqing, Alex realises that today's Chongqing is on its way to a megacity.
25:24The city's past and the great changes it has been through are its real charm.
25:36So he hopes, with Zhang Gaowei's help, to rediscover the memory recorded in Bruce's lenses.
25:41Alex and Zhang Gaowei arrive at Tianse Gate, looking for Chongqing porters known as bang bang men,
26:06with numbers dwindling to just a few from hundreds of thousands.
26:10When you retire, is this going to retire?
26:28Or will they give this to some people?
26:31When you retire, is this going to retire?
26:33Or will they give this to some people?
26:35Oh, my God.
26:37These images.
26:40Even while I was walking the streets of Chongqing today, looking at these photos, trying to figure out what happened in the last 30 years,
26:48showing the progress of Chongqing as a city, it's quite amazing.
26:52I think that Bruce has started something special, where he has given us a guideline to capture a city.
27:09If you stand at the same position and shoot at the same angle, the photos taken over a span of 30 years can show the great changes in Chongqing.
27:17The land of Chongqing
27:30From only one bridge to 37 river crossing bridges, the people of Chongqing have realised
27:52a miracle of urban construction.
28:00And Alex has been one of these witnesses.
28:24Today, Ma Reijing, who lives in Beijing, feels a more vibrant life.
29:00Inspired by this, he decides to take China's world-ranging logistics as the theme of photography
29:05assignment for this semester.
29:08He hopes to present Chinese times completely different from those shown in Madaro's works.
29:13So he needs the opportunity to take photos in China's logistics enterprises.
29:18Ma Reijing's application for shooting is approved by China Post.
29:40This is the Beijing Sorting Centre of China Post, located outside the Fifth Ring Road in Beijing.
29:50The staff warmly welcomed Ma Reijing.
29:56Ma Reijing, who lives in China, is a great opportunity to take photos of China.
30:12Today's express logistics have reached the world and have become the key bridge of exchange
30:29between China and the world.
30:38Visiting and photographing at the logistics enterprise gives Ma Reijing an idea.
30:44During his three year stay in China, he has never delivered anything to his family.
30:49This time he wants to send gifts to his parents via courier.
30:52He has never delivered anything to his parents via courier.
30:59And he found that a Chinese person can send it to his parents via courier.
31:07Besides gifts for his parents, the package also contains something
31:37special. It is a photo album he carefully put together.
31:58These photos record Mao Reijing's happy life and the true China in his eyes.
32:03Mao Reijing imagines that when his parents open the package, they would feel his homesickness
32:18and the good times when he has been studying and growing in China in this new era.
32:32This photo was taken in 2009 in Tengue Desert, Zhongwei City, Ningxiahui Autonomous Region.
32:40It only caught a brief moment while the struggle between man and the harsh environment has lasted
32:45for at least hundreds of years. It is because of this photo that people got
32:52to know British environmental photographer Sean Gallagher.
32:58I am a photographer and filmmaker. I am originally from the UK, but I first came to China in 2005.
33:06I am particularly interested in my work in understanding environmental issues and with China being
33:12such an important country in Asia. I knew that what happened here in China was going to be
33:21important for the future of Asia and the environmental issues would be key to China's future. So I wanted to use my passion for photography and photojournalism to try to understand that.
33:27To understand what China was doing.
33:34Sean Gallagher
33:41Sean Gallagher
33:56Sean, a foreign photographer in China, eventually focused his lens on the desert.
34:06This is largely because there is no desert in Britain. He was curious about this natural landscape.
34:12Meanwhile, he wanted to understand
34:14how human civilization survives in deserts.
34:18So, when I read articles about desertification in China,
34:23it talked about villages being swallowed by sand dunes,
34:27about sandstorms engulfing cities.
34:30It conjured up all these incredible images
34:32that, in my mind, I thought would be amazing to photograph.
34:36In 2009, Sean came to Dunhuang, Gansu province,
34:42where he saw a desert for the first time.
34:44But from the moment he set foot in Dunhuang,
34:47he changed his view.
34:49That was really surprising to me,
34:52because it was the first time that I'd seen people
34:55using the desert for tourism.
35:01And it was really interesting to see that ingenuity
35:04that people had used the desert
35:08as a benefit for the local people economically.
35:12So, for me, that added a new dimension to my story,
35:15because it was unexpected.
35:19The trip to Dunhuang completely changed
35:22Sean's perception of the desert.
35:24He decided to visit more desert areas
35:26and, through his images, tell the story
35:29of China's fight against desertification.
35:34To Ningxia, Gansu, and into Xinjiang.
35:40And each place I stopped,
35:43I photographed a small story
35:46that was part of the biggest story about desertification.
35:50So, in Inner Mongolia,
35:52I photographed disappearing nomadic life.
35:56In Ningxia province, I photographed how one city
36:00had been built in the desert to rehouse people
36:06that had been moved from the land,
36:08because their land had been so badly affected
36:10by desertification, that a whole new city...
36:15In 2010, Sean visited Kulun Banu, Inner Mongolia,
36:20where he found that people here have not only adapted
36:22to living in and around the Gobi Desert,
36:25but have also transformed their homes.
36:30Which is quite a special place,
36:31because a lot of tree planting has been taking place there
36:35over the years as an effort to try to stop desertification
36:39in the north of China.
36:41And so there's been large tree planting campaigns
36:44in the north of China.
36:47And this image, you can see in the foreground,
36:50and they would plant the trees in these rows
36:54in an effort to try to turn this land.
36:58I think in China they discovered
37:02the large tree planting campaigns.
37:06In 2014, Sean visited Kulun Banu again.
37:10Although only a few years had passed,
37:12some amazing changes had taken place here.
37:15And you could see a lot of the area
37:18had turned into forest in combating some of these issues.
37:23And then hopefully that success can spread to other areas
37:27and be shared with other countries
37:28that are facing a similar problem of desertification.
37:35In October 2022, Sean receives a phone call
37:39from a tree planting volunteer who knew him
37:41in Kulun Banu, Inner Mongolia.
37:43Are you now in Dunhuang?
37:45Yes.
37:45I've been here for three years.
37:48I've been here for 1,000,000 years.
37:51I've been here for 1,000,000 years.
37:52I've been here for 1,000,000,000 trees.
37:54It's beautiful now.
37:56You come here, I'll take you to visit.
38:01Invited by this local volunteer,
38:03Sean decides to visit Dunhuang again.
38:09More than a decade has passed since his last visit,
38:12and Sean is looking forward to seeing a new Dunhuang.
38:15DUNHUANG
38:17DUNHUANG
38:19DUNHUANG
38:21DUNHUANG
38:23DUNHUANG
38:25DUNHUANG
38:27DUNHUANG
38:29DUNHUANG
38:33DUNHUANG
38:35DUNHUANG
38:37DUNHUANG
38:39DUNHUANG
38:41DUNHUANG
38:46DUNHUANG
38:48And I think China, over the past 15 years,
38:49is starting to learn about the importance of protecting the environment,
38:54because it's core to how society develops.
39:00So issues like desertification, climate change,
39:04issues around China's wetlands, or looking at forests,
39:09these are all environmental issues that are going to be affecting us for decades,
39:13hundreds of years, these stories don't end.
39:17DUNHUANG
39:22DUNHUANG
39:24DUNHUANG
39:31DUNHUANG
39:31DUNHUANG
39:33Bruce, now nearly 80 years old, has settled in China for 35 years.
39:38DUNHUANG
39:39He keeps rediscovering China with his camera to this day.
39:42DUNHUANG
39:43DUNHUANG
39:45DUNHUANG
39:4730 minutes to Beijing, to Tianjin.
39:50Enough time to get a coffee.
39:52For 35 years, I have seen the people of this country,
39:57and I'm saying it honestly, the lifestyles have improved incredibly.
40:12Peter keeps cycling in his hometown in the US every day.
40:16He looks forward to cycling through China once again during his lifetime.
40:20You know, I was saying earlier that when you have a vision or a dream or an aspiration,
40:26the people who early on say that's great,
40:29how can I help you?
40:36Maruajing will end his studies in China next year.
40:56In October 2022, Ruben Lundgren received an invitation from the Hangzhou Art Exhibition
41:06to exhibit his photos and share with the world his video stories on China.
41:13Then I do know this kind of change of time.
41:29That's a great story to tell to Dutch audience to say, listen, this is what's going on in China.
41:38Today, it only takes a 40-minute drive from Heijantao's home to the Great Wall
41:43via the expressway.
41:47And he is no longer the young boy who felt the bitter taste of Coca-Cola 40 years ago.
41:52This is a straight path.
41:57And everyone will walk along.
42:10Look at the Grand Canyon.
42:12This is coming from the south.
42:14It is more close to the nearer.
42:14So I think I should go to this one.
42:28I think I should go to this one.
42:33When I was building this stone,
42:35I was building this stone when I was building this stone.
42:38And I didn't even think of the first time I was here
42:41and I was drinking my first cup of coffee.
42:44I was shooting my first color picture.
42:51Over the past half a century,
42:53the Great Wall still stands in silent splendor
42:56and looks the same.
43:04Just like the porcelain and silk on the Dunhuang ancient road
43:08connecting eastern and western civilizations,
43:10photographers from all over the world today
43:13are connecting China and the world through images.
43:19The real, interesting and beautiful stories of China
43:22continue to unfold through their lenses.
43:25World of War II
43:41World of War II
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