A Trip Through China (1917) | Blair University Archives

Step into a vanished world.

A Trip Through China is a rare surviving fragment of Benjamin Brodsky’s ambitious ten-reel travelogue, filmed across China in the mid-1910s and originally released in 1917. Captured just six years after the fall of the Qing Dynasty and only sixteen years after the Boxer Rebellion, this footage offers an astonishing window into a civilization in transition. A China where imperial customs still shaped daily life, yet where the modern Republican era was only beginning to take hold. Viewers are transported through the streets of Peking (modern Beijing) to witness scenes that had remained nearly unchanged for over a thousand years: bustling markets, artisans and craftsmen at their trades, acrobats and street performers, children at play, religious processions, a traditional funeral, and remarkable glimpses of the Forbidden City itself shortly after it ceased to house an emperor.

Preserved through a collaboration between the New Zealand Film Archive, the UCLA Film & Television Archive, and the National Film Preservation Foundation, this 1917 silent film is now presented here for educational purposes as part of Blair University’s ongoing mission to preserve and share humanity’s hidden visual heritage.

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Tony Vortex

S.T.E.M. Researcher & Teacher | Healer - Tony is the Spiritual Son to the beloved Dr. Delbert Blair. At age 11 he began to study plant life and their healing mechanisms as it bothered him deeply to see so many older family members needlessly sick. Throughout the years he has been sharing what he knows so that others may live a life full of abundance while exploring its mysteries.