China then and now
Over the past 30 years China has been through drastic changes, most notably the economic reforms of the late 1970s and early 1980s, which brought with them shiny high-rise buildings and industrial centres where farms, markets and fishing villages once stood.
Reuters photographers have been documenting this transformation over the decades. In the above 1990 photograph, villagers attend a rally in Shaanxi province.
People push their bicycles across a railway track during rush hour in Shanghai.
Lines of cars are pictured during a rush hour traffic jam in central Shanghai.
People perform Arhat exercise, a form of traditional Chinese fitness exercise, at a park in Beijing.
Locals dance during a morning exercise session at the Temple of Heaven park in Beijing.
Women wearing sunglasses pose for a group photo at a park in Beijing.
Women apply make-up as they wait during the job fair for China Eastern Airlines flight attendants in Shanghai.
Locals walk past a barbershop in the Sanlitun area of Beijing.
Shop owner Gong Chui Zhen fixes trousers at the entrance to her shop in an old quarter of Shanghai.
People offer sewing services at an open market in Quanzhou, Fujian province.
Employees work at a production line of a garment factory in Huaibei, Anhui province.
People hold tape recorders to record folk songs during a singing contest in Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.
Beijing-based punk foursome Subs' lead singer Kang Mao (left) and bassist Zhu Lei practise at their studio on the outskirts of Beijing.
A child sitting on a roadside snooker pool plays with her mother in Beijing.
Three-year-old Wang Wuka practises snooker as his father Wang Yin positions the balls on the table at their home in Xuancheng, Anhui province.
Chinese prisoners return to their compounds at Jiangbei Prison in the central province of Hubei in the evening after working in the fields and collecting cotton branches for firewood.
Prisoners, who are about to be released after serving their sentences, listen to information about a company at a job fair held for them inside a prison in Luoyang, Henan province.
