I recently had a conversation with a young(er) American expat who has been living in China nearly ten years. I had told him about the talk – The Warlord and the Engineer – the Royal Asiatic Society (Suzhou branch) had hosted a few weeks before. The remarkable thing about the talk was how the Danish Engineer Robert Christensen and adviser to the warlord Zhang Zuolin had meticulously recorded his life in journals while he lived in China during the 1920s, had cataloged hundreds of photos and had captured the times on film, as well. The expat and I agreed those of us living in China were experiencing a special period in its history – call it “The Goldilocks Time”, when wealth seemed to flood Chinese streets. One day, the rapid-development period will all be a distant memory. Who amongst us will be the chroniclers of this time?

The expat admitted he had desperately few photos of himself and his time here in China, despite a decade’s worth of experiences. I personally have a bunch of photos, the blog, the books I’ve written. And now that I have a son, recording the ordinariness of our lives here has become more important to me.

I told the expat that for me, while watching the photos and film footage of 1920s Mukden (Manchuria), what interested me most was not the foreigners frolicking in the foreground, but the locals toiling in the background against backdrops that are gone forever.

It’s tough to gauge just how precious one’s everyday existence may be to future generations.

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