Canton, Kwangtung province, China. Photograph, 1981, from a negative by John Thomson, 1869.

A woman holding a large plain fan and a round flat-sided lacquered vessel with a handle, standing in a room with a European-style column set in the wall behind her. "The lady's maid. This maid is a slave girl, bought in China for a trifling sum from her poor parents, as female children are at a sad discount in many parts of China, where infanticide is still practised. This girl has been reared in the bosom of the family, and trained to wait on the ladies of the household, to attend to the children and to make herself generally useful. In this picture she is represented on her way to market, the slave enjoying more freedom in going abroad than does her mistress. In her left hand she holds a small lacquered-ware case for cakes and confections, and in her right a huge fan to screen her from the sun ... the fan is employed as a sunshade, as well as keeping down the temperature of the body; excessive heat and cold being considered two of the leading causes of disease ..."--Thomson, loc. cit.