Three things to notice:
1. Bikes. This line of bikes went all along the kilometres of Chang’an Jie. Simple one-speed machines. You didn’t need more than one gear on the flat Beijing streets. Sturdy as heck. Indestructible. Brands like Flying Pigeon. Now all gone, replaced with cars. In some places bikes are illegal. By the way, honesty ruled then. You hardly needed to lock your bike. People didn’t steal. True, ‘dat.
2. The one car in the pic: Partly obscured; it’s a Shanghai SH760 Sedan.
Grok: ”This was the most prominent passenger car in mainland China during the 1970s and 1980s. It was widely used as a taxi and a standard vehicle for government officials who were not high enough in rank to qualify for the larger, more exclusive Hongqi state limousines.”
The Shanghai was a copy of Chrysler and Ford models of the late 1950s. A copy. Plus ça change.
3. The clothes. Blue or grey cotton trousers and jackets, the bonnets of the day: “comrade cap”, like a Peaky Blinders flat cap. It was what my fellow students and I wore. That was all that was available for clothes then. Still, you needed ration tickets to purchase, just as you needed ration coupons for rice, for meat, for flour, for basically any necessity.
Today Chinese dress like anywhere else, though they’ve got some quirks of their own. Like tucking T-shirts into their trousers. And trousers with belts no matter what. And of course they’ve got more than enough consumer goods and food. They’re even getting fat, like we westerners…
