Google recently announced that they would be hosting a collection of photos from Life Magazine. Dan at the excellent China Law Blog pointed out that you can search through the pictures to find interesting stuff. A search for “Guangzhou” strangely doesn’t return any entries; but of course, when many of these pictures were published, this city was known as “Canton”. There are only about 200 results for Canton, but some of them are great pictures of the City. This is the search phrase that should give you the right results:

canton source:life

Shamain Island is clearly recognizable, and many of the street scenes must have been taken in the Renmin Nan Lu area. Some of my favorites:

• Streeside Baozi
• Aerial view, you can see the cathedral on Yide Lu in the center of the shot
• Guangzhou’s answer to the Flatiron Building. Its still there on Yanjiang Lu. Flatiron Building
• Do you recognize Haizhu Square?
• This GZ is slowly disappearing, I love the art deco architecture
• This is how our neighboorhood still looks
• I bet we can find this street, somewhere near Yide Lu and Renmin Lu.
• Kids playing in the park on Shamian Island