The latest edition of Wang's book is released by Post Wave Publishing Consulting (Beijing).[Photo provided to China Daily]

A young woman looks deep into her lover's eyes as they scrunch together in a narrow bed, sharing one blanket, in a sleeping carriage of a train heading from Guangzhou to Chengdu.

The moment was captured in 1996 by Wang Fuchun, a photographer who's renowned for his book Chinese People on Trains, which features photographs capturing such moments in the lives of people traveling on trains.

Since 1978, Wang has devoted himself to photographing passengers on trains for nearly 40 years, and the 74-year-old photographer still sticks to this theme.

As time has passed, his collections of black-and-white images have formed a record of the changes in Chinese society and charted the transformation of China's railways as they have progressed the age of steam locomotives to diesel to the current era of electric bullet trains.

"His works show a strong sense of the times and display the spirit of the people," Yuan Zi, an author known for his young-adult fictions, said at a recent book event in Beijing to promote the release of the latest edition of Wang's Chinese People on Trains.