Lantern Slides of China

Posted: August 28th, 2025 | No Comments »

A series of lantern slides of China tourist sites and views (some of which are easily identifiable and some not) produced by The Photo Bureau of 34 Nanking Road (Nanjing East Road) for sale to tourists who wanted to entertain their friends, Women’s Institute, church groups, schools or whatever back home to a lantern slide show. I’m afraid I don’t have a date for these.

#34 Nanking Road was obviously the Photo Bureau on the ground floor and offered furnished rooms for let on the floors above. The company advertised itself as ‘Makers of Coloured Lantern Slides, Enlargements, Cinema, Amateur Developing and Printing’. The business was owned by a Mr Vandenburgh with Mr Wong as Manager and a Mr Woo as the Chief Artist. The earliest reference I have for them being in business is the mid-1920s. Before that, around the time of the First World War, #34 appears to have been a wine merchants run by a Mr JW Gande who had been in China since the 1880s. Before Gande, in the 1890s and till the early twentieth century the store was owned by a Mr Schlichting, a general merchant whose business was called Sing Tong in Shanghainese I believe, and who lived over the store with his wife.

Anyway, here’s a random selection of lantern slides from The Photo Bureau…

---