When Emil Vasilyevich Bretschneider, son of a Russian forester and top graduate of European medical schools, was sent to Peking as it was then called in the 1860s as physician to the Russian Embassy, he became fascinated by Chinese culture.
Where many of his compatriots stayed safely within the European compounds, he learned to speak and write Chinese with fluency, made extensive collections of local botanical samples, and commissioned local artists to make sketches and paintings of Peking life as he - and they - saw it.
In the first English language edition of the Bretschneider albums, general editor Vitaly Naumkin has selected 126 pictures from the collection held in the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The brief but illuminating explanations in English are drawn from the original and extensive notes in Russian and Chinese.
The charm of the book is its depiction of everyday life in last-century China - whether young or old, poor or wealthy, busy or idle, the people are shown going about their ordinary business, with the tools and tricks of their trades and pastimes.
So one plate shows wealthy women playing with long thin cards, fanned out elegantly in front of them.
Round coins or tokens are in stacks on one side: this is one of the few scenes where little has changed.
