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Family album charts accomplishments 
By Mark Hughes (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-01 12:02

Family album charts accomplishments 
Chinese People's Liberation Army soldiers march through the Xisi archway, drawing a big crowd in Beijing, in February 1949. [Photo by Gao Fan] 
If some of the most treasured items in a household are the photographs of key moments - a newborn baby, a son or daughter graduating from college or a day out at the fair - then this beautifully-bound volume is China's family album, capturing the highs and lows, the industry and the celebrations, the challenges and the achievements.

Its aim is to help one understand China - and to do that it shows where the China we know today came from. And, perhaps, hint at where it's going.

As Zhu Ling, China Daily's Editor-in-Chief, reiterates in his foreword, a picture is worth a thousand words. What we have here, then, in 362 images, is a history to which not even hundreds of thousands of words could ever do justice.