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Framing urban memories

A young photographer retraces China's millennium-era skylines, sparking collective nostalgia and optimism through architecture, Chen Meiling reports.

By Chen Meiling | China Daily | Updated: 2025-11-22 09:39
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Liu photographs old buildings from decades ago, including hotels, office buildings, and supermarkets, as a way of looking back on his childhood. These photos earn him fans on social media platforms. LIU YUJIA/FOR CHINA DAILY

This nostalgia, he adds, has psychological value. By photographing or viewing such buildings, young people experience a form of time travel, an inexpensive escape into a simple childhood.

The architecture also satisfies younger generations' search for alternative aesthetics. With their unusual shapes — imaginative yet slightly awkward — the buildings embody an era's dream of "modernization" and "internationalization", representing what Dou calls a "naive futurism" (once prevalent in the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialist countries).

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