One technique that artists like Wu Youru employed to make steam technology visually salient was the inclusion of smoke emerging from their smokestacks. Notice how in every image of a train appearing in this module, billowing clouds of smoke trailing behind the locomotives produce a sense of motion through space. In “Visualizing the Anthropocene,” (2014) Nicholas Mirzoeff argues that “the aesthetics of the Anthropocene emerged as an unintended supplement to imperial aesthetics – it comes to seem natural, right, then beautiful – and thereby anaesthetized the perception of modern industrial pollution.” While late 19th century China was almost certainly not so polluted as to alter the quality of light in major cities, I would argue that Mirzoeff’s first two conditions apply – almost every image of a technological marvel appearing in the pictorial features plumes of coal smoke, and these technologies dominate the visual frame.