Entitled: Beggars, Beihai Park [c1917-1919] SD Gamble [RESTORED] The picture was taken in Pei Hai Summer Palace Peking (what is known today as Beihai Gong Yuan, Beijing, China) I cropped off about 10 percent image area from the left (with a partial figure), retouched the spots and most of the scratches; corrected the contrast, and added a sepia tone. I also whited out the view of the genitals that was apparent in the original as a nod towards today's anti child porn environment, despite this being an acknowledged and accepted historical image.

A worthwhile image from the Sidney Gamble Collection at Duke University. The full uncensored and uncropped image of the original can be seen here: library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/gamble.252-1420/

One of my favorite stories about China is Pearl S. Buck's, The Good Earth. For those of you that don't know, Buck was the daughter of two American missionaries that were posted to China in the turn of the century 1900's. Though born in the US, at the age of three months, she was taken by her parents on their extended religious mission to China. For all intents and purposes, she was raised in China and became intimately familiar with the indigenous customs, manners, language, culture and ethics. Being one of the first bi-cultural writers in modern history, her serendipitous childhood in China allowed her unique insights that only someone in her position could obtain. In today's culture, her equivalent would be that of an American Born Chinese or Canadian Born Chinese, in which a Chinese child grows up with Chinese trappings in the midst of western culture. Buck's was a western child who grew up with western trappings in the midst of Chinese culture; except for the color of her skin, she was absolutely Chinese. Her prize winning literature detailed the life of an ordinary farmer and his family's rise from poverty. Along the journey she clearly illustrated the distinct and uniquely Chinese pressures and concerns in a way that, for the first time, any westerner could easily understand. Her novel, The Good Earth, written in 1931, won a Pulitzer in 1932, and then the Nobel for literature in 1938. It is still read and enjoyed by many today. Upon seeing this picture, I was instantly recalled to a passage in Buck's story:

"...and she said to them, "Each of you take your bowls and hold them thus and cry out thus…" And she took her empty bowl in her hand and held it out and called piteously, "A heart, good sir, a heart, good lady! Have a kind heart, a good deed for your life in heaven! The small cash, the copper coin you throw away, feed a starving child!" The little boys stared at her, and Wang Lung also. Where had she learned to cry thus? How much there was of this woman he did not know! She answered his look saying, "So called when was a child and so was fed. In such a year as this was sold a slave." Then the old man, who had been sleeping, awoke, and they gave him a bowl and the four of them went out on the road to beg. The woman began to call out and to shake her bowl at every passerby. She had thrust the girl child into her naked bosom, and the child slept and its head bobbed this way and that as she moved, running hither and thither with her bowl outstretched before her. She pointed to the child as she begged and she cried loudly, "Unless you give, good sir, good Lady, this child dies, we starve, we starve…" And indeed the child looked dead, its head shaking this way and that, and there were some, a few, who tossed her unwillingly a small cash..."

This picture is interesting in that it is quite obviously posed. I could not imagine that any beggar family would quietly stand still for a portrait unless there was some sort of gain to be had from it. Gamble most likely offered them the remuneration of a few coin for doing so. That they were destitute is clear, wearing literally nothing but rags on their back. My interest is heightened by the nearly naked urchin, third from the left, who has his arm raised. The fact that he is nearly naked and exposed doesn't seem to matter to him at all. He appears to be preoccupied with raising his right arm; what was his purpose for doing so? Was he attempting (with his raised hand), to stop the boy in front from fidgeting; but how would he have known that to take a picture, one had to hold still? Or, was he attempting (with his raised elbow), to stop the boy (second from the left) from further stepping into the picture and stealing a share of the photographer's promise of a reward? Interesting too, is their style of haircuts and degree of poverty. I noted that while poorly dressed, the second boy from the left is decidedly better off than all the rest of them, and his hair is closely shorn. This suggests (to me least) that he is not a member of the family, and that while a beggar too, was probably an outsider to their group. The remainder of the boys seem to have their hair cut in the Qing tonsure style, that is, the front portion of the skull in shaved while the rear portion is allowed to grow and then is to be eventually tied into a queue. This second boy also has a look on his face, of what? Anger? Or was it determination? In other words, was he determined to intrude into the picture?

Considering all of the above, my speculation therefore is that it was probable that the third boy was raising his elbow to protect his family's stake (in the offer of a reward for posing), and the second boy was just as determined to get a piece of that stake. When looking at a picture in this way, I feel that history comes alive with real people and is full of passion.