Charles Dickens' Hard Times in 21st Century China

 21st Century China, described by Charles Dickens

 1. “………a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes allowed it.

Buildings in Beijing Source

 2. “…….a town of machinery and tall chimneys”.

Industrial zone in China source

 3. “…….interminable serpents of smoke”.

Factories in Beijing Source

 4. “…….it had a black canal in it”.

River in rural China source

 5. “…….a river that ran purple”.

Local river in Wenzhou, China source

 6. “…….vast piles of buildings full of windows that were rattling and trembling all day long”.

Beijing source

 7. “……..the piston of the steam engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in melancholy madness.”

Factories in Beijing source

 8. “It contained several large streets, all very like one another: and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours with the same sound upon the same pavement, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow and every year the counterpart of the last and the next”. 

Factory workers in China source

 9. “All the public inscriptions were painted alike, in severe characters of black and white”. 

Chinese Street Signs Source

 10. “The jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail, the town-hall might have been either, or both, or anything else, for anything appeared to the contrary in the graces of their construction”.

Building in China source