Library

From 1907 to 1909, a little-known British female writer embarked on a grand tour in China. She recorded the Chinese society and Chinese people at that time from an outsider's perspective, and wrote 19 long letters to introduce her experiences and knowledge in this big Eastern country to friends in the UK. The first stop after landing in Shanghai was to Zhifu, Shandong, and she made full preparations for the next trip to China. Starting from Beijing, her trip officially started, heading to Wuhan via the Beijing-Hankow Railway, heading west to the Sichuan Basin, then to Hebei and Shanxi alone, then south to Nanjing, and returned to Shanghai via Hangzhou. This two-year journey was about 20,000 miles in total. In Luo Anyi's writing, the street vendors, the progressives who led the new trend, and the dignitaries at the time of the collapse of the Qing Dynasty all came to life on the page. On the eve of the Revolution of 1911, the traditional era was quietly disintegrating...