柯達 Verichrome在一個盒子裡與到期日期1943年12月

Yes that's right -- just what's the subject says -- 120 Kodak Verichrome in a box with the expiration date of December 1943. I received it from a seller in a village in Northern Illinois and were hoping for the images from... a village in Northern Illinois (or Chicago, if the stars are gracious), but something completely different came out of my darkroom's wet darkness:

Now, this is no doubt Mainland China in the early or mid- 40s.
The flag in the first frame is the flag of the First Republic of China (now flag of Taiwan)
The second frame looks so familiar to me personally because I use to live in a town (Kazan, Russia) were:
-- half of the population were ethnically tatar i.e. Asian;
-- the railway station was also brick and somewhat similar design;
-- it was under soviet rule so people were generally poor, always carrying stuff, always were some military and/or police uniforms in a crowd, just like here.

The second image was probably taken from train's door or from another platform. Simple camera was used -- the image is not very sharp at edges. This film had traveled half a globe in space and 65 years in time which is very unusual for a forgotten film, but the proof is here. We don't know how exactly it had happened -- Americans were generally not welcomed at the time in China; the country was torn in pieces by war and civil unrest; so the photographer was not a tourist. But, it happened and we now have two excellent holes in a fence

Let's look!