From The Archives

This 1890 photograph from the archives of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, shows one JC Oswald (third person from the left), at a tea tasting room in Fuzhou in China's Fujian province. According to the photographer's caption, in order to consistently judge the color of the tea and the tea leaves, a tea-tasting room would face north and be top-lit, just like an early photographer’s studio.
We could not find out much about JC Oswald expect that he was a tea broker. But the person with a more domineering personality, underlined by his handlebar mustache, strangely goes unidentified.