Kowloon, Hong Kong, China: a Chinese family. Photograph by John Thomson, 1869.

A family eating a meal. Two men, one young, holding a bowl and chopsticks, the other older, seated at a table with two young children, a woman standing behind one of the children. Behind her a wall with a small square opening. Three cats sitting under the table and the rear of another at the lower left hand corner. More bowls and a large container on the table. The same as Thomson's negative number 689a, probably one half of a stereo pair

A poor Chinese family living in Kowloon. Although Kowloon was handed to the British in 1860, it largely remained undeveloped until much later and it was mainly occupied by an impoverished Chinese population. While Thomson found the then British Crown Colony of Hong Kong comfortable and familiar, its Chinese population presented him with a curious way of life and character, and he regarded the life of the poor in Hong Kong as not dissimilar to the life of the poor back in Britain: "Poverty, insufficient and unwholesome food, a humid atmosphere and temperature over 90 deg. in the shade, account in a great measure for the frequent visits of cholera and the black plague." The Chinese, according to him, were superstitious and backward, and they "stubbornly refuse sanitation as a body, or as individuals. But of this we have examples much nearer home, in the centres of congested population in our large towns."

1869

1 photograph : glass photonegative, wet collodion

Canton family, Kowloon Bears Thomson's negative number: "689"

This is one of a collection of original glass negatives made by John Thomson. The negatives, made between 1868 and 1872, were purchased from Thomson by Sir Henry Wellcome in 1921

China through the lens of John Thomson, 1868-1872, Beijing: Beijing World Art Museum, 2009, p. 154 (reproduced)

Wellcome Collection 19624i