Entitled: Natives At Breakfast, Movable Chow Shop, Canton, China [c1919] Keystone View Co. [RESTORED] I did the usual spotting, contrast, tonal corrections and added a sepia. However there are really serious limits that one can do when the original shot was set up with a single light source and no apparent or proper fill. The shadows in this case, seem to be deeper than the US national debt.

I just love these funny propped shots that purport to show the "real" Chinese slice of life. The funniest part is that there were probably some who believed these pictures wholeheartedly. A mixture of truth, probabilities, outright falsehoods, and a often a lot of the photographers' wild imagination, they're not only of historical significance, but begin to take on artistic value purely because of their sheer Kitsch.

That said, historically, street vendors did in fact sell hot food from either portable or rolling kitchens like this in the larger Chinese cities of the 1900's, so the image probably leans more to the truthful side than not. However I do question the dating of this image, which seems to be thematically similar to many that were produced by the BW Kilburn Co in 1901 (Kilburn unfortunately never issued sets of images). As Kilburn eventually closed its doors in 1909, its vast collection of 17,000 views and over 100,000 plate glass negatives was sold to Keystone View.

Source: www.yellowstonestereoviews.com/publishers/kilburn.html