China: an old man with his mule. Photograph by John Thomson, 1869.

A man standing behind a saddled mule against a plain background in a sunny street. Thomson called him a "Mahometan butcher". As Thomson noted, the mule was a leading means of transportion within and beyond Beijing, and over time he had formed 'a high opinion of the sagacity and patience of Pekingese mules'. They were used not only for carrying goods, but to ferry people up to the Great Wall. Thomson himself was carried up to the Wall by a Beijing-style mule litter