40 years ago, we aspired for the beautiful life of “living in buildings, using electric lamps and telephone” and eating “beef stewed with potatoes” in daily life; 40 years later, people living in material abundance rack their brains to find the ways to keep their spiritual world from loneliness. China’s society and economy have seen a geometric growth in the 40 years. The photographers undertake the responsibility of recording the times, keep a video diary with their camera and give a panoramic sketch of the times. It is the poetic thought and magic power of time. The book carefully selects more than 300 works of Chinese and foreign photographers that objectively show from multiple dimensions the changes of the Chinese in basic necessities of life, consumption, money management and social connections from 1978 to 2018―It’s impossible for us to retrieve the lost time but we can open the photo album and recall the happiness and hardships through the whole journey recorded in photos.