About a month ago, as I was reading 三茅真君寶卷， I came across an unfamiliar term that seemed particularly interesting: 西洋景. Literally, it translates to “Western Ocean Sight.” Googling it, since my default basic dictionary yielded no results, led me to this fascinating image:
I know so little of film history, but the caption on the website claims that this photo was taken in the 1870s in Beijing. The text I was reading was an 1877 reprint of a text with its earliest extant edition from 1873, placing it in the correct time period for such an early piece of “motion picture” technology.
The text, by the way, warns against spending money on such things since they often show lewd contents which inspire their viewers to lewd activities. Unsurprising, given the nature of the stuff I research.
Why am I writing about this, aside from the neat reference to emerging technology in my conservative text?
Because tonight, when I went to my Google books collection in search of a different book I have stored there, I had a sudden moment of recognition when I saw the cover of Peeps into China, a saccharine book about the experience of pious missionary kids visiting their father in China*.
Though I doubted that the ebook cover was representative of the original cover, here’s the first image in the book:
Not at all useful, but a surprising connection!
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* As a missionary kid myself, this book is particularly funny.
天恩寶卷 