I had the opportunity to visit China in 1986. It was a great time: the cultural revolution was over but the economic boom hadn’t yet started. As you can see from these photos the vast majority of people still wore grey, blue or dark green workers uniforms. There were identical black bicycles everywhere but very few cars on the road and most of them were pretty strange. Shanghai still had the skyline of New York circa 1925. Restaurants had live snakes, guinea pigs, eels, turtles and more on display, ready for the patron to select.
