China in Pictures – The Fall of the Qing

Even suspicion of disloyalty to one's Manchu rulers was punishable by lingshi, death by a thousand cuts. More than slow torture, lingshi rendered the body unfit for the afterlife, guaranteeing the sufferer and his family that he would spend eternity as a mutilated ghost.

The Han - undisputed masters of turning lemons into lemonade. A mere century after the Manchus required all Han males to wear queues, as a sign of submission, the hairstyle was considered the height of fashion. After the Qing crumbled, the new China Republic found banning the queue its most arduous reform.

Of course, life in the late Qing meant more than cruel penalties and outlandish hairdos. Xiyangjing, "sights of the west", were compact movie theaters, whose operators narrated and provided original audio tracks.

In the countryside, however, famine was never more than a few seasons away. Here, starving refugees crowd the alley outside of a relief office in the imperial city.

Famine-sickened babies and their mothers wait outside a charity hospital.

Far from agricultural society and its discontents, nomadic herders prepare a meal in their tent.

Perhaps the lack of color and sooty faces make the Chinese of a mere century ago seem too distant. Chen Chuansen, renowned for his sense of realism, captures a tender, timeless moment between mother and child.

This Mongolian mother and daughter don't seem quite as relatable. Maybe it's the clothes.

Nothing more universal than laughing children, though.

Taiwan photographer Deng Nanguan was famed for the dynamism in his work. A rich family pays respect to its ancestors on Tomb Sweeping Day.

A stylish young woman on Beijing's Pingjiaodao Street, also by Deng Nanguan.

The true soul of China, a vegetable market, by photographer Mai Feng.