Grandfather's 36 Photos: A Frenchman's 1996 China, Revisited on a Phone

The Dinner Table with a Blue Shirt

My grandfather came to China in 1996. He was over sixty that year, and it was the farthest he had ever traveled in his life.

Today we were eating at his place. On the table: the same bottle of red wine he drinks every day, a plate of potatoes half-finished, and the blue shirt I have seen since I was a child.

Halfway through the meal, I handed him my phone.

"Grandpa, let me show you what China looks like now."

The Phone in Front of Him

He pushed his sunglasses up onto his forehead, then put on his reading glasses on top of them — two pairs at once, like an engineer preparing to repair a satellite. Then he held the phone at arm's length, as far as it could go.

A dozen photos went by. He was still on the first one.

It was the QR code payment photo.

The QR Code: "Where Is the Money?"

He stared at it for a long time. Then he turned the phone over and looked at the back.

"Where is the money?"

"They all pay with their phones now."

"Then what about the thieves?"

I laughed. He did not. He was genuinely worried about Chinese thieves losing their jobs.

The Delivery Rider: Two Yuan for Hot Soup

Later I showed him food delivery. Thirty-five minutes, a bowl of hot soup, delivered to the sixth floor.

"Who made it?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said.

"Why would someone deliver it to you?"

"Because I paid two yuan for the delivery."

He said: "That price would not even cover a phone call in France."

The High-Speed Train: "Forgotten at the Airport"

Then came the high-speed rail. Beijing South Station. The Fuxing train sat there, red and white, so clean you would never guess it carries hundreds of thousands of people every day.

He brought the phone closer and swore: "Putain."

"This is a train?"

"Yes."

"It doesn't look like one."

"What does it look like, then?"

"Like something that forgot to take off at the airport."

I showed him the video of a coin standing upright on the train. He said it was fake. I said it was not. He was silent for three seconds.

"In France," he said, "it takes ten years of arguments to build one road."

The 1996 Beijing: Dark Streets and Bicycle Bells

He told me about his Beijing back then. The nights were very dark. The streets were mostly bicycles, and bells rang from one end of the street to the other.

For three days he was ringed at by bicycle bells, and he thought everyone was greeting him — so he kept waving back.

He had brought a camera with him: one roll of film, thirty-six photos, three weeks in China.

Thirty-six photos. Half of them were of one roasted duck.

He said that duck was worth it.

The 36 Photos — Half of Them One Duck

At the end of the album, he handed the phone back to me.

"I didn't expect it would turn out like this," he said.

I asked him: "What about your photos from back then?"

He said: "Not many survived."

The film disappeared somewhere, no one knows where.

I looked down at my own phone — thirty-eight thousand photos, not one lost.

He stood on the streets of Beijing in 1996, breathing the wind of that year, seeing the China of that time. And that China did not leave him many photos. Not even the duck.

When I left, I looked at the blue shirt again. Thirty years ago, he carried a camera to China. Today, I held a phone and gave China back to him.

I have thirty-eight thousand photos. He has thirty-six. And he lost them.

But when he closes his eyes, those bicycle bells are still ringing.

What Never Disappears

This is a story about China — but it is really a story about memory.

The 1996 China that my grandfather carried home existed for three weeks and left him with almost no photographs. The 2026 China I showed him from my phone exists in thirty-eight thousand images that will never be lost. One version of China disappeared into a lost roll of film; another version fits into a pocket.

Yet the grandfather did not need the photos. The bells, the duck, the dark streets, the blue shirt — they were already inside him.

For travelers, this is the quiet truth: China changes fast, but the China you actually live in — the sounds, the meals, the people — travels with you even when the photos do not.

Sources

• Personal family account (translated from the original French family story)
• China Railway (Fuxing high-speed train public specifications)
• Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics (transport and urban change data)
• People's Daily (digital payment adoption data)

Recommended China Travel Tours

Pair your reading with a hand-picked itinerary from our real tour collection:

• Chimelong Double Park · Family Fantasy Marine & Animal Journey: 5 Days, 4 Nights Guangzhou-Zhuhai Tw — A composite image full of dreamy colors and joyful atmosphere. The left side features the iconic massive acrylic wall of
• Hunan · Land of Fish & Rice and Sleepless City Flavor Odyssey — A visually striking collage. Top left: Silhouette of fishermen hauling nets at sunset by Dongting Lake in Yueyang, paire

Ready to Plan Your China Trip?

Email Sam for customized tour planning.

Email Luppy for group bookings (10+ travelers).

Visit ChinaTravelPlus.com for the full collection.