View of the Great Wall at Badaling
Photograph by John Thomson
According to Thomson, "no illustrated work on
China would be worthy of its name if it did not contain a picture
of some portion of the Great Wall". For him, the Great Wall was an
expression of a "national characteristic of the Chinese race": for
the Chinese, their country was the centre of the world. This
photograph was taken at Badaling near the Nankou pass.