China of the 80s is similar to the Soviet Union as a twin brother

For many who were born in Hong Kong in the 1960s, mainland China of the 70s and 80s was both close and very far away. It seemed like a mysterious country.

Photographer Alex Ng was born in the early 1960s and took up photography in the late 1970s. As a student of journalism in the 1980s, he traveled around China and carried a camera everywhere with him. At that time, he had been interested in photography for only three or four years and knew little about Chinese traditions and culture. Alex Ng loved to travel around China by train and did it right up to graduation.

The photographer kept the captured negatives in boxes and did not publish them until recently, until he came across them again. Then he decided to arrange a photo exhibition about his youthful travels. It turned out that China in his pictures of the 80s strikingly resembles the Soviet Union.

(22 photos in total)

The bell tower in Xi'an, 1984.

Steppes in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, 1984.

Xuan Wu Gate Street, Beijing, 1985.

Marble rook in the Summer Palace, Beijing, 1985.

Trolleybus in front of the National Museum, Beijing, 1987.

The waiting room at the train station in Jinan, 1984.

Tombs of the Song Dynasty in Gongxian County, 1984.

Xihu Lake ("West Lake") in Hangzhou, 1984.

The Manchurian Railway of the end of the Qin Dynasty, Dalian, 1985.

Baotu Source in Jinan, 1984.

The Grand Canal in Suzhou, 1984.

Shaolin monk in Songshan, 1984.

The Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing, 1984.

The western side of Tiananmen Square, Beijing, 1984.

A city on the water in Suzhou, 1984.

The Temple of the White Horse in Luoyang, 1984.

"The Head of the Old Dragon" — the eastern tip of the Great Wall of China, 1985.

Tiananmen Square, Beijing, 1984.

An elderly couple sells fried food, Suzhou, 1984.

Railway station in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, 1984.

Port in Dalian, 1985.

Qianmen, Beijing, 1985.