Old photos of the northern countryside a hundred years ago: dilapidated houses, muddy roads, are farmers wearing coarse clothes?

Villagers in Laoling, Shandong Province. During the period of1913-1916, Frank N. Meyer, a botanist born in the Netherlands, was employed by USDA to explore and collect woody plants in China. During this period, he took a batch of photos of northern rural areas and farmers, which became an important reference for us to study the social history of the early Republic of China.

A village in Taian, Shandong Province. Through these photos, we can see the real rural landscape in the north 100 years ago. The shabby houses, muddy roads and farmers in coarse clothes make people feel the poor life of that era. From today's perspective, it gives people a feeling of isolation.

The scene of a village in Shanxi. In the early years of the Republic of China, the situation in the countryside was a mess that continued from the Qing Dynasty, and people's livelihood was depressed. After President Yuan Shikai took over, he didn't make much progress in rural construction. Farmers still depend on the weather for food. Coupled with the influence of the Bailang Uprising in North China, the life of farmers is even more difficult.

A muddy road in a village in Zhou Pu, Shaanxi. In the countryside of the old society, there is a remarkable feature, that is, every household pickled a jar of radish, ate pickled radish all the year round, ate this pickled vegetable as a meal and swallowed the coarse grain staple food. Nowadays, young people have never experienced it and can't understand the feeling of grinding their voices, but they should have heard it from their grandparents.

Villagers in a village in Shanxi are carrying out folk activities.

Yangping, Shanxi, a market in a small town, doesn't look very lively.

The thatched cottage of a family in Xinglong, Hebei. In his book My Life, Feng Yuxiang described the life of farmers in central Hebei in this way: I have never seen anyone deliberately cook a dish of cooking while eating, let alone meat dishes. Green onions, radishes and pickles are vegetables they often eat. Some people are unwilling to eat pickles. Just soak some salt water temporarily. When the wheat is ripe, only one or two people eat wheat flour, and usually eat sorghum, bonzi, millet flour and other miscellaneous grains. ?