Agricultural laborer - Public domain portrait print

Photograph shows a Chinese agricultural laborer, full-length portrait, standing, facing front, holding a large scythe with a child next to him.
Title from front and back of item.
Caption on back : "Agricultural laborer. The Chinese are careful and laborious farmers and there are numerous and practical treatises, proclamations and pamphlets published, and in general circulation, explaining the minutest details for the cultivation of cereals, cotton , silk, &c., with clearness and precision. Some of their rules are handed down from antiquity, and are adhered to from generation to generation with a tenacity which cannot be overcome. The Scythe shown is one of European manufacture, but the gardeners employed by foreigners soon become adepts in its use; and although they steadily resist any innovation in their mode of planting and succession of crops, &c., they do not object to using foreign implements to save themselves labour."
Photograph taken by John Thomson in Shanghai, 1870-72. (Source: Regine Thiriez, 2009)
In album: Japanese and Chinese portraits, [p. 50, lower right].