Read Prof. Jianping Wang’s introduction about the Collection [PDF]
Select photos from the collection can be viewed in a slideshow below
In 2005, Prof. Jianping Wang (Professor Emeritus, Shanghai Normal University) first examined rolls of photo negatives which were donated by the family of Rev. Carter D. Holton after his passing. Holton, an American missionary, worked in Northwest China from 1923 to 1949. As Prof. Wang writes in an introduction to the collection, the photos show “the social and cultural lives of the ethnic minorities living in the border region of Qinghai Province and Gansu Province, including Tibetan, Salar, Hui, Dongxiang and other nationalities, as well as the Han.” He notes that the materials are “important primary materials for the research of the religious culture and the ethnic minority societies in the region of Eastern Qinghai and Southwestern Gansu in the period of the Republic of China.” Over more than a decade, Prof. Wang continued to research the Holton family and the photo collection, conducting extensive fieldwork in Qinghai and Gansu and meeting with elderly villagers who had known Rev. Holton and his family.
In his introduction, Prof. Wang describes how the photos provide a rare and special chance for later generations to see the history of an isolated region, and that Rev. Holton’s unique methods in recording the social and cultural life of the area provide us with a great treasure, functioning as a sort of ‘historical museum.’ “Thus, Rev. Carter Holton and his missionary colleagues…set a very good example for us and for the later generations… [in] recording the history and culture of the Tibetan-Gansu region.”
In the spring of 2024, the Harvard-Yancheng Library organized an exhibit on “Footsteps of the Past: Muslims in China,” curated by Sadiya Gurhan. To learn more about the exhibit, visit the library’s website.