A train for Yunnan - The tribulations of two French people in China

A train for Yunnan - The tribulations of two French people in China.

From January 21 to 6 April 2015. The National Museum of Asian Arts - Guimet (MNAAG) presents, in 65 photographs from its collections, the crossed stories of the adventure of two French expatriates in South China at the 19th century, gathered on the occasion of the construction of a railway in Yunnan.

The exhibition is produced in partnership with the Departmental Museum of Asian Arts in Nice and is part of the France-China 50 commemorations.

China goes through the end of the nineteenth century with profound troubles. The Opium War (19-1839) and Western interventions, which end in the Summer Palace bag (October 1842), create foreign pressure that causes multiple incidents. The exasperation culminated with the Boxer War (1860-1899), the seat of foreign legations during the "1901 Days of Beijing" and the sharing of China in competing areas of influence.
In this context, France wanted to assert its presence and connect by rail the north of the Indochinese peninsula, under its rule, in Yunnan, in southern China, thus opening a way of penetration into the old weakened empire. She charged Auguste François, consul in office, with the organization of negotiations with the Chinese authorities to create the Laokay-Yunnanfu line. Between 1903 and 1908, Georges-Auguste Marbotte joins the project. The construction of the most complex railway line in the world, rich with more than 3000 structures - viaducts, tunnels, etc. - on the less than 500 kilometers of its course, seals the meeting between the consul adventurer and the accountant traveler, both photographers. This adventure leads them to make many trips to the confines of the empire.
With their goals they immortalize the populations they live with, their customs and lifestyles and the titanic work done by local workers on a site singularly perilous. Their magnificent photographs most often frame actions and beings in grandiose landscapes with impressive reliefs; these two photographic works, gathered in the exhibition, reveal the hidden face of a China with astonishing beauty where few travelers ventured far off the beaten track.
After many challenges, at the dawn of a new century, the railroad was connecting two worlds, colonized Indochina and wild Yunnan. The railway became a means of communication between East and West and today remains a strong symbol of a century of human relations between France and China. This railway, which the Chinese still use, has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site by 2013.