The search for photos of China's past

[dipsydoodle]

China's photographic record begins only in the 1970s because nearly all earlier pictures were destroyed. The ones that survived are mostly outside China, and a major effort is now under way to bring them together online, says Mary Ward-Lowery.

Twelve years ago a student from Peking University knocked on Robert Bickers' door.

He'd come, he said, to study Keats, but he knew Professor Bickers was a historian, a specialist in Sino-British relations at Bristol University.

The student had been given a travel grant to come to the UK, with specific instructions to find historical photographs of Peking University. "Because we don't have any," his Chinese professors told him.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18784990