Taiping kung, near Kiukiang, Kiangsi province: a ruined religious building, China. Photograph by John Thomson, 1872.

A stone flagged path, in the centre foreground, a woman standing to the left. A tower in the distance at the right hand side. Similar to John Thomson, Illustrations of China, London, 1873-4, vol. III, pl. XV, fig. 29. According to Thomson, this photograph was taken in a small town called Taiping kung, about ten miles from Jiujiang. The area was close to Bailu Cave in Mount Lu, where the celebrated neo-Confucian scholar Zhu Xi once stayed. Although Thomson was told this was once a famous Buddhist monastery, he thought the ruin resembled the pointed Gothic apertures of a medieval European building. He thought at one point that it might be a Jesuit mission. However, Matteo Ricci only stayed in the Nanchang area, and there is no record of him building a mission near Mount Lu. The old lady in the photo is there perhaps to symbolise the antiquity of the ruin