Peking, Pechili province, China: a collector of paper money. Photograph by John Thomson, 1869.

An old man with a basket over his shoulder and a sort of broom, posed in front of a pale plain background. Seems identical to Thomson's negative number 729 bis, but that one has been scratched through. Probably one half of a stereo pair. Beijing’s streets were once full of collectors who made their living picking up any kind of recyclable items, from bits of coal to scraps of paper and used cloth. The majority of such collectors were children and the elderly. They would hang around for other people or the state-run carts to dump their rubbish, whereupon they fought to get anything they might be able to sell for a pittance. This old man made his living by collecting scraps of printed paper money that were manufactured in order to be burned before shrines. He also gathered rags and bones from the rubbish heaps, selling his miscellany to a dealer at the end of each weary day