According to an apocryphal story about the late Qing dynasty (1616 – 1911), the formidable Empress Dowager Cixi invented the practice of smiling for the camera circa 1903.
When Yu Derling, the empress’s French-educated lady-in-waiting, brought back a camera from abroad, the empress believed that the black, smoke-emitting contraption could steal a person’s soul and print it on a piece of paper—so to get her employer to relax and smile, Derling asked her to say “cheese,” which the empress mispronounced as qiezi (茄子 “eggplant”).
A calligrapher gets his brush snatched away by his grandson (Luoyang, Henan province, 2015)
A woman of the Dong ethnic group donning her sister‘s school uniform to do farm work (Huaihua, Hunan province, 2016)
This incident probably never took place, as Derling’s own memoir Two Years in the Forbidden City makes no mention of it, and actually portrays the empress as being quite enthusiastic about the technology. Still, saying “qiezi” before taking one’s photo is now common practice in China today, and there’s evidence that smiling has always been common in early Chinese photography.
A porter who transports tourists’ luggage up the Wudang Mountains smiles as he takes a break in his work (Shiyan, Hubei province, 2020)
A homeless man enjoys the temporary garden and home he has made by the roadside (Shantou, Guangdong province, 2016)
Compared to the stiff-necked, black-and-white portraits that were the norm in their home countries during the same period, missionaries and travelers in China at the turn of the 20th century frequently took photos showing Chinese farmers and rickshaw drivers pausing to smile in the middle of their work. One photo dated between 1901 and 1904, titled “Eating Rice, China” collected by the American Museum of Natural History, even sparked accusations of forgery on social media in 2019, due to the modern-looking toothy grin sported by the man in the image.
A ferryman who has lost an eye, looking at the scenery of the ancient town of Fenghuang immortalized by writer Shen Congwen (Xiangxi, Hunan, 2018)
Two strangers smile as they make harmonies on their erhu in a Beijing park (Beijing, 2015)
A sanitation worker enthusiastically climbing up Mount Lushan to pick up trash (Lushan, Jiangxi province, 2018)
A man smiling in his sleep in the early morning at Beijing West Railway Station (Beijing, 2015)
Many people have attempted to explain why Chinese were apparently fonder of smiling in photos than Westerners—the simplest explanation being that grassroots laborers during that time didn’t know what the camera was, so they just flashed a smile for the foreign visitor. Over 100 years later, photographer Xin Ting has produced a body of work that is reminiscent of this tradition. Responding to a monthly competition on the theme of “Smile” on Fengniao, an online community for photographers, in 2019, Xin originally went looking for photos of smiling children within his repertoire as an easy solution. But later, when he got a commission to design an ad for a moving company, he says he became struck by the “ordinary laborers who silently work and are quickly forgotten, and the strength and wistfulness contained in their generous smiles.”
A handcrafts worker shows off a jade stone he just polished at Beijing’s Panjiayuan Antique Market (Beijing, 2016)
A trash-collector smiling under an umbrella as he cycles on his rounds on a rainy day (Shantou, 2014)
A shop owner and her cat enjoys their lunch together (Shantou, 2014)
Mischievous children make forts out of Styrofoam in an inner-city wet market (Shantou, 2022)
An elderly vendor sounds a silver chime to attract passersby’s attention as he hawks malt candy in Huaqiangbei Digital Square, one of the hubs of Shenzhen‘s tech industry (Shenzhen, Guangdong, 2018)
A man enjoys the backyard he transformed with a birdhouse, sofa, and swing for his family and visiting swallows to rest their tired bodies (Zhongxiang, Hubei, 2018)
“The composition of these photographs may not be anything special, and perhaps their content isn’t crowd-pleasing, but I truly like them, and like the people in them,” Xin wrote on Fengniao. “They remind me of a set of lyrics by [Taiwan singer] Jonathan Lee, ‘Ordinary people are the ones who move me the most.’”
Photography by Xin Ting (辛挺)
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