We all might have wondered about how people looked like in the 1900s, especially people across the Pacific Ocean. A Chinese Family is a picture of a typical Chinese family created by the Detroit Photographic Co. between 1898-1905. The details, framing, and lightness of this picture indicate a lot of things happening in China during that time period. 

This picture is pretty simple at the first sight. However, when we look closely into it, it gives a lot of details. For example, the way they are dressed depicts the mixture of culture in China at that time period. The children are dressed in very traditional Chinese costumes whereas they wear pretty western clothes underneath such as jeans, boots. At that age, China was forced to open their gate towards the western countries because of the Tang dynasty. The culture shock brought a huge impact on people's daily life. People were forced to open their eyes to western culture. It brought the mixture of western and traditional culture in China during 1898-1905. During that time period, China was colonized by a lot of western countries and there were both movements denying and allowing western culture. Women were more conservative at that time. As we can see in the picture, the woman is wearing very traditional costumes and her hairstyle is very conservative too. Married women had to put their hair as a bun like what the woman in the picture did. What's more, women could not have their jobs because they had very little education and they were married only to give birth to children at that time. The number of children or especially the number of male children is the cultural status of women. Ideally, this woman would be considered pretty successful and should be respected by her husband or other people in their family because she gave birth to and raised four male children. However, this woman looks hunchbacked due to taking care of children and doing housework everyday. Most of the men were liberal about themselves, so they did not wear traditional costumes most of the time. However, they were conservative about their wives. They did not want women to wear short or tight clothes. In the picture, all of the children seem to be boys. This reveals the ideology that most of the Chinese families believe that boys are better than girls at that time. 

Another detail to look at is the facial expression. It explains that they are hesitated. The child on the leftmost is the only one that's not caring about the picture taking because he is too young to understand what's going on. When we think of family protection, we often think of our father when we are young. However, there is no man in this "family" picture. There were wars going on during that time period, and men were required to serve in the military which they would not be able to come home most of the time. Their father might be in the military. In addition, there was a movement called Hundred Days Reform that a group of people suggests that China would develop better from learning the western culture as well as science and technology in 1898. However, the emperor and the conservatives were against that. They killed a massive amount of liberals. Depending on the clothes the children are wearing such as boots and jeans, their father might be a liberal so he might be killed during movements that are against western cultures. Also, during the Qing dynasty, widows were not supposed to be remarried. They were supposed to take care of their children and keep the family well continued. 

In addition, the picture is taken by an American company, which probably means an American photographer took this picture. They might be scared of foreigners, or they might not even know what the big machine in front of them is. At that time, camera was undeveloped in China. As we can see, the resolution of this picture is pretty high compared to the technique at that time. Therefore, A Chinese Family was taken by an imported camera that was not common at all. As a housewife that does not go out a lot, she probably has never seen a camera before. As mentioned earlier, women were very conservative at that time, so it might be a hard decision the woman in the picture made to let a foreigner take a picture of her family. The company that created A Chinese Family has a lot of art photographs about different countries and events between 1898 and 1905. Their purpose is to show people from all over the world what people looked like in different locations during that time period. 

The overall color theme is slightly yellow, and the lighting of this picture is pretty dark. It indicates the darkness of the society such as low status of women, and the sex discrimination to the family. The background of the picture is very old and dusty. There is a little bit of unorganized doodle on the wall, but it shows the oldness and dirtiness of the wall. The framing of this visual text is simple. The picture was taken right in front of the stairs with four children sitting on the stairs and a woman standing aside. If this picture is taken nowadays, the children might not be so hesitated and the woman might not be hunchbacked anymore. Nowadays, we can see foreigners and cameras everywhere, and we take pictures everyday while she needs to take such a big courage to let a foreigner take a picture of her and her children in the 1900s. In addition, if their picture was all over public media back in that time, the woman would be considered not loyal to her husband. Today, the picture is for us to see what a typical Chinese family looked like in the 1900s whereas if it were shown in the past massively, it would be a shame because women, especially married ones, should not be seen by a lot of people. They were considered to stay inside of the houses and serve their families.

A Chinese family successfully showed us what a typical Chinese family looked like during 1898 and 1905. It includes a lot more context when we look deeply into it. Visual text is more powerful than printed text sometimes. It also gives people the exact look of what things look like instead of people imagining by themselves. In this particular case, a printed picture works a lot better than printed text because it is hard to imagine people across the ocean more than a hundred years ago.
