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Blast from the Past; Check out Amazing Old Photos of Nanjing!

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Today is Children’s Day in China. And so it is appropriate that a collection of the supposed first colour photos of Nanjing featuring the faces of young ones from more than 75 years ago is today doing the rounds on social media.

Technology is wonderful, especially when it connects us with that before its own very existence. Embodying that concept is an official WeChat account dedicated to bringing photographs of the Nanjing of old to the increasingly younger generations who have no recollection thereof.

The account in question is “Nanjing Old Photographs” (南京老照片). Find it via a search of “Official Accounts” in your WeChat.

Fittingly for today, among its recent highlights is the alleged first colour image of Nanjing ever found. It was taken by a Major Martin William Hiller of the United States Air Force stationed in Shanghai. Said photo is of a child.

According to Nanjing Old Photographs, Miller was born in Iowa in 1913. Graduating from Iowa State University, majoring in agricultural engineering, Miller joined the military in 1936, in first the United States Army Air Forces, then the Air Force. After World War II, he was stationed in Shanghai from 1945 to 1948. 

Miller loved photography and left behind tens of thousands of photographs and many film reels. It is thought that the photos of Nanjing were taken by Miller and his wife, Margaret, during a visit to Nanjing in May of 1946.

Also dating from a little thereafter are other past visual delights of the city we call home today. Horse-drawn carriages on Zhongshan Dong Lu seem more appealing than today’s ubiquitous Didi. A hoarding outside the Capital Cinema advertising the incoming Joan Crawford blockbuster, “Mildred Pierce”, is enough to want to download the movie today.

Many of the account’s other photos appear to be concentrated in the 1980s, a period with particular appeal to a wide swathe of the local populace.

That all said, The Nanjinger has been looking at the account off and on for a few months now and has noticed on occasion the use of copyrighted images, which does put a bit of a dent in the account’s credibility.

Nevertheless, Nanjing Old Photos remains a great use of 21st century social media that can help better inform and educate today’s younger Nanjinger as to some of the pivotal periods in their city’s history.

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