■ collector Li Yueping fell in love with the blue sky of Xiamen and came to settle down

■ hope to build a public welfare museum for free exhibition to citizens

■ Li Yueping organizes old photos.

■ The whole body photo of a couple wearing traditional costumes was taken in Xiamen in 1870.

Six months ago, Li Yueping, a 57-year-old photo collector, came to Xiamen to settle down and live. He said that in the past 30 years, he has collected 3 million old photos at all times, at home and abroad. He is willing to show some of the old photos to Xiamen citizens for free, hoping that relevant units can provide venues and make exhibition boards. He also told the reporter about his special feelings for Xiamen and the ups and downs of the 30-year-old photo collection.

Before retirement, Li Yueping was a middle school Chinese teacher in Beijing. He said that 900,000 of the 3 million old photos he collected were old photos from the south, and nearly 1,800 of them pointed the lens at Xiamen. “I have a wish to set up a public welfare old photo Museum in Xiamen in the future, which will be open to ordinary people free of charge. Friends from Xiamen and Taiwan can visit and have cultural exchanges. Music is the business card of Xiamen. If you make old photos, you will add another bright business card to Xiamen.” Li Yueping said.

“The age of these old photos spans from the Qing Dynasty to the early stage of reform and opening up”, Li Yueping introduced that there were not only the landscape and landform, customs and customs of Xiamen in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, but also the supply and marketing cooperatives of Xiamen in the 1950 s, pictures of industrial and agricultural production. Mazu culture and Buddhism culture in Xiamen are also reflected in the photos.

In addition to the old photos of Xiamen, Li Yueping said that he also collected about 50,000 old photos of Taiwan. “When Japan was defeated, the Kuomintang seized a large number of photos of Taiwan from the Japanese by air to Nanjing, and many of them stayed in the mainland later.”

Li Yueping told the reporter that he retired early because of physical reasons and concentrated on writing lyrics and scripts. Xiamen had a good environment and blue sky and white clouds gave him a lot of inspiration. “I seldom see blue sky in Beijing. Xiamen has inspired me a lot. I used to write lyrics for two months, but now I can write them in two days.” With his creative partner living in Xiamen, he chose to settle down in Xiamen.

Collection Story

Spend more than 70,000 yuan to ask someone to scan and repair the picture and use the old photo as the material to create the script

The collection of old photos was not overnight. 30 years ago, collecting old photos began to enter Li Yueping’s life.

“The collection of old photos in those years was far less popular than now. The old photos in the cultural relics market were sold very cheap. Many units did not have the awareness of photo protection. The mouse moved to where to go.” Li Yueping said that by chance, he found that the staff of a unit living in the same yard had raised a lot of negatives and old photos to be discarded. As a Chinese teacher in a middle school, knowing the importance of photos for understanding history-“One picture wins thousands of words”, he bought a few cigarettes for each other and exchanged the negative film and old photos back home. Since then, Li Yueping fell in love with the collection and arrangement of old photos. His standard for collecting photos is to try to be original and original negative. In the past 30 years, he paid attention to the local flea market everywhere, covering Panjiayuan in Beijing, Beilin in Xi’an, Wanshou Road in Xiamen and other places. He often searched for photos in the pile of old books. At the same time, he also contacted more than 8,000 photographers or old photo holders before collecting the existing photos.

It also takes a lot of effort to repair and organize old photos. Since 1999, Li Yueping has spent more than 70,000 yuan to ask someone to scan and repair the picture. The old photos in the Xiamen-Taiwan area are all HD pixels, with a resolution of more than 300 lines, which is very clear.

At first, Li Yueping was just out of hobbies. He didn’t expect that the collection of old photos would be so hot after decades. Many people once laughed at him for spending money on waste paper, but he still enjoyed it. “There are thousands of stories in the photo. A clothes button can read many cultures, and an old photo is a fragment of that year.” Old photos also brought him a lot of gains. He created TV plays with old photos as materials. In the past five years, he wrote three TV plays, and two of them have been broadcast.