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  3. Cambridge Library Collection - Travel and Exploration in Asia

This collection of travel narratives, mainly from the nineteenth century, records the impressions of Europeans who visited China, Japan, South and South-East Asia. Some came as missionaries, others as members of trade or diplomatic missions or as colonial administrators. Some were straightforward tourists and one or two arrived as prisoners or shipwrecked sailors. Such accounts of travellers' experiences in exotic locations were eagerly received by European readers.

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96 results in Cambridge Library Collection - Travel and Exploration in Asia

Page 5 of 5

Through the Yang-tse Gorges
  • Or, Trade and Travel in Western China
  • Archibald John Little
  • Published online:
    05 July 2011
    Print publication:
    31 October 2010
    First published in:
    1888
  • Through the Yang-tse Gorges is Archibald Little's diary (published in London in 1888) of his journey up the Yangtze River from Shanghai to Chongqing by a native junk boat in 1883. Little strongly advocated the introduction of steam travel on the upper part of the river between Yichang and Chongqing, a port open to Western trade. The upper Yangtze was full of gorges and rapids which made travel treacherous; Little's journey by junk boat took a month, whereas the journey by steamship would have taken only 36 hours. He was repeatedly rebuffed in his attempts to introduce steam travel to the upper Yangtze by the Chinese government, which he accused of standing in the way of modernisation. He successfully introduced a steamship on the upper Yangtze river in 1898. Several other books by Little and by his intrepid wife are also reissued in this series.

The Land of the Blue Gown
  • Alicia E. Neve Little
  • Published online:
    05 July 2011
    Print publication:
    10 June 2010
    First published in:
    1902
  • In the Land of the Blue Gown, first published in 1908, is a thorough and descriptive non-fiction work by Mrs Archibald Little. Born in 1845, she became best known for her travel writing and for her campaign against the Chinese custom of foot-binding. Mrs Little travelled widely both alone and with her husband, Archibald (1838–1909), and eventually settled in the Sichuan province of China. She admired many aspects of Chinese culture, but made it her life's work to become a vigorous leader of the anti-foot-binding movement. This book paints a marvellously descriptive account of her travels to Beijing and remoter parts, and describes her views on the culture, scenery, customs, religion, and much more. The book is extensively illustrated throughout, and also includes a chapter on her 'anti-foot-binding tour'. Other books by Mrs Little and her husband are also reissued in this series.

My Diary in a Chinese Farm
  • Alicia E. Neva Little
  • Published online:
    01 June 2011
    Print publication:
    10 June 2010
    First published in:
    1898
  • Published in Tokyo in 1894, Mrs Little's diary of her summer stay at a local farmhouse in the Chinese interior near Chongqing provides a first-hand account of rural Chinese life in the nineteenth century from a European's perspective. Mrs Little was an accomplished author, having written numerous novels on women's social roles under her maiden name, Bewicke. In My Diary, she continues this theme of women's place in society. Her account also touches on the interactions between Christian missionaries and the local people. She was an active campaigner against the Chinese tradition of binding the feet of young girls, and helped to bring about its abolition. A limited run of only 500 copies of My Diary was originally printed. It contains 26 illustrations and is an invaluable historical source for studying rural life in nineteenth-century China.

Five Months on the Yang-Tsze
  • With a Narrative of the Exploration of its Upper Waters and Notices of the Present Rebellions in China
  • Thomas Wright Blakiston
  • Published online:
    28 April 2011
    Print publication:
    10 June 2010
    First published in:
    1862
  • Thomas Wright Blakiston (1832–1891) was an army officer, explorer and naturalist who served with the British forces in Ireland, Nova Scotia and the Crimea before being posted to Canton during the second Opium War in 1859. While in Canton, Blakiston organised an expedition up the Yangtsze river and Five Months on the Yang-tsze (1862) is his account of his experiences navigating 'one of the greatest rivers in the world a distance of eighteen hundred miles'. Despite the region being subject to extensive insurgency, Blakiston was able to travel 900 miles further up the river than any European before him except Jesuits wearing local attire. His narrative, divided into nineteen chapters with illustrations by Alfred Barton, contains many observations relating to the politically volatile situation in China as well as descriptions of the local landscape, flora and fauna. It remained the standard account of the region for fifty years.

Old Highways in China
  • Isabelle Williamson
  • Published online:
    10 January 2011
    Print publication:
    31 October 2010
    First published in:
    1884
  • In 1873, the Christian missionary Isabelle Williamson set out from Chefoo (Yantai),China, to spread the gospel to Chinese women. Her four separate journeys along the ancient roads of Shandong Province and Beijing are recorded in Old Highways in China (1884), a chronicle of the everyday lives of the women to whom she preached. 'My interest was chiefly in the women', Williamson explains, 'and I looked at all through a woman's eyes'. Reserving her missionary work for another publication, Williamson devotes this keenly observed book to the details of life in the villages she visited - the work, play, rituals, and stories of women and girls. It also describes Williamson's own remarkable travels, set against the stunning natural backdrop of northern China. An important witness to women's missionary work in China, her book is also testament to the intelligent eye of its author as she seeks to portray 'China's daughters'.

Gleanings from Fifty Years in China
  • Archibald John Little
  • Edited by Alicia Little
  • Published online:
    10 November 2010
    Print publication:
    10 June 2010
    First published in:
    1910
  • This series of essays by Archibald Little, a well-known Victorian expert on China, was published posthumously in 1910. Little, who first arrived in China as a tea taster for a German company, spent half a century living in Western China, and his affection for the Far East is evident in the romanticised tone of his work. Little's writings not only describe his life and travels in China, but also contain shrewd observations about the country's natural resources and commercial potential. The book is divided into four parts: 'Trade and Politics', 'Travel', 'Drama and Legend' and 'Religion and Philosophy', and the essays cover an eclectic range of topics, from 'How to register your trade mark' to a close analysis of traditional Chinese drama. Writing with an unmistakable sense of humour, Little exhibits a profound understanding of and empathy with the people of his adopted country.

Across Yunnan
  • A Journey of Surprises
  • Archibald John Little
  • Edited by Alicia Little
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    31 October 2010
    First published in:
    1910
  • Published posthumously in 1910, Archibald Little's memoir of his journey across the Yunnan Province in Southwest China was one of the first comprehensive accounts of the region to be published in English. Little, a skilled linguist, worked as a merchant in China for over fifty years and opened up the Upper Yangtze area to steam-powered commerce. He was well known for his intrepid travels into territories not yet explored by Westerners, and his record of this journey was originally published as a series of letters to the North China Herald. This book also contains Little's account of the building of the French Railway Line to Yunnan-Fu, which provided a trade route from India to the Upper Yangtze region. Across Yunnan was completed and edited by Little's wife after his death in 1908. The book includes a detailed map of the area and several photographs.

Land of the Dragon
  • My Boating and Shooting Excursions to the Gorges of the Upper Yangtze
  • William Spencer Percival
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    10 June 2010
    First published in:
    1889
  • First published in 1889, Land of the Dragon provides a lively account of William Spencer Percival's daily life as a British civil servant working in Shanghai at the end of the nineteenth century. An author of several travel books such as Twenty Years in the Far East (1905), Percival takes his 'sympathetic' British friends' prejudices about China as pretext to give a thorough account of his life in the East. He delights in relating his boating and hunting excursions in the Chinese countryside, and his adventures – camping out, shooting pigs, and towing through rapids – are packed with often extraordinary anecdotes about the land, the Chinese people, and other foreigners, including American and Roman Catholic missionaries. Part travel diary, part anthropological study, this book gives a valuable insight into the relationship between the British and the people of Qing dynasty China.

The Far East
  • Archibald John Little
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    24 June 2010
    First published in:
    1905
  • Written by one of the most prolific writers on China at the turn of the century, this 1905 publication was intended as a guide for travellers rather than as a scientific study of Asian landscape and culture. Little, a well-known merchant and traveller, spent fifty years of his life exploring the Orient. The book is structured with a chapter dedicated to each region of China and the 'Dependencies' (Manchuria, Mongolia, Turkestan, Tibet, Indo-China and Korea), as well as Siam and Japan. Little proves himself a shrewd observer of both landscape and peoples, and the content of his work is wonderfully detailed. He manages to encompass a wide range of subjects into his survey, including natural resources, the development of railways, trade routes and meteorology, as well as a history of the land mass and populations. The book is supplemented with several maps and illustrations.

Narrative of a Recent Imprisonment in China after the Wreck of the Kite
  • John Lee Scott
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    10 June 2010
    First published in:
    1841
  • Narrative of a Recent Imprisonment in China after the Wreck of the Kite (1841) is an autobiographical account, written by the merchant sailor John Lee Scott, of his 'shipwreck and subsequent imprisonment in the Celestial Empire' in 1840, during the First Anglo-Chinese or so-called 'Opium' War. In eight chapters, Scott describes leaving South Shields in the Kite, 'a beautiful brig of 281 tons' for Singapore in order to 'carry stores to the British fleet destined for China'. Scott recounts how the Kite was capsized on its way to deliver supplies to the British fleet based around Chusan, and how he and other crew members, after being washed up on the island of Ningpo, were captured by the Chinese and held prisoner for five months. Scott's Narrative provides an interesting insight into British perceptions of the Chinese during the Anglo-Chinese conflicts of the nineteenth century.

China Under the Search-Light
  • William Arthur Cornaby
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    03 June 2010
    First published in:
    1901
  • A London-born Wesleyan Methodist missionary, William Arthur Cornaby (1860–1921) spent over thirty years in China, where he edited The Chinese Christian Review, and, from 1905, the Ta Tung Pao, a weekly magazine targeted at Chinese officials and scholars. His many books on Chinese culture and civilisation, including A String of Chinese Peach-Stones (1895) and Rambles in Central China (1896), provide detailed sketches of Chinese rural life and customs. The later China Under the Search-Light, first published in 1901, uses Western clichés about China as a point of departure to offer a more nuanced understanding of the underlying facts and problems specific to Chinese society. In this book, Cornaby discusses contemporary topics such as overcrowding in Shanghai, mandarins, and Buddhism. He also scrutinises newspapers, novels, and aesthetic traditions, offering an elementary introduction to Chinese culture as perceived by a nineteenth-century British missionary.

Unbeaten Tracks in Japan
  • An Account of Travels in the Interior, Including Visits to the Aborigines of Yezo and the Shrines of Nikkô and Isé
  • Volume 2
  • Isabella Lucy Bird
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    24 June 2010
    First published in:
    1880
  • Isabella Bird's Unbeaten Tracks in Japan was published in 1880 and recounts her travels in the Far East, begun four years earlier. Bird was recommended an open-air life from an early age as a cure for her physical and nervous difficulties. She toured the United States and Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the Sandwich Islands, before travelling to the Far East in order to strengthen herself to marry Dr John Bishop and live in Edinburgh. Based on the letters Bird wrote home, primarily to her sister, Volume 2 covers her journeys to Yeso, Tokyo, Kyoto, and the Ise Shrines, and includes her experiences of staying with the Hairy Ainu, the indigenous inhabitants of northern Japan. As with the first volume, it includes much detail of the lifestyles, customs, and habits of the people she encountered, as well as a chapter on Japanese public affairs.

The Foreigner in Far Cathay
  • Walter Henry Medhurst
  • Published online:
    07 September 2010
    Print publication:
    17 June 2010
    First published in:
    1872
  • Walter Medhust's 1872 book traces his personal impressions of nineteenth-century Chinese society. The author is determined to give a picture of the country and its inhabitants that is realistic and free of the tired clichés often found in contemporary Western accounts of the country. Medhurst engages with a wide spectrum of Chinese traditions and habits: looking at the characteristics of advertising and how Chinese newspapers are run; describing opium-smoking and Chinese burial customs; delving into the relationship between men and women; and sampling the delights of Chinese cuisine. He also writes about the position of foreign citizens in China and focuses on the relationship between China and the Western world. Concerned that the West should show China the respect it deserves, he attempts especially to capture the essence of the Chinese character.

Travels in China
  • Containing Descriptions, Observations and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen
  • John Barrow
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    29 July 2010
    First published in:
    1804
  • In 1792, a British embassy headed by Earl Macartney travelled from Peking (Beijing), China, to Canton (Guangzou) with the aim of improving trade with China. The complete account of the mission was recorded by the Earl's private secretary, Sir John Barrow, in Travels in China (1804), a work intended to 'shew this extraordinary people in their proper colours' as well as to 'divest the court of the tinsel and tawdry varish' which Barrow thought that missionary accounts promoted. Both a paean to British imperial ambitions and a compelling example of early nineteenth-century travel literature, Travels in China presents an account of Chinese government, trade, industry, and cultural and religious practices through the eyes of one of England's most ardent expansionists. Barrow would go on to write an account of the mutiny on H.M.S. Bounty (1831), but Travels in China remained by far the more significant work in his lifetime.

Among the Tibetans
  • Isabella Bird
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    24 June 2010
    First published in:
    1894
  • Isabella Bishop (née Bird) published Among the Tibetans in 1894 and recounts her adventures of five years earlier. Bird was recommended an open-air life from an early age as a cure for her physical and nervous difficulties. She had previously toured the United States and Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Sandwich Islands, and the Far East before her marriage to Dr John Bishop. After his death in 1886, Isabella resolved to travel again, although now for missionary purposes. She studied practical medicine at St Mary's Hospital in London and was baptised in a ceremony of total immersion. She travelled to India and Tibet in 1889, both visiting medical missions and embarking on the journey into Ladakh on horseback and by houseboat, camping and living among the natives. The book recounts her observations of day-to-day life in the area, as well as its politics and environment.

The Journal of Mr Samuel Holmes, Serjeant-Major of the XIth Light Dragoons, During his Attendance, as One of the Guard on Lord Macartney's Embassy to China and Tartary
  • Samuel Holmes
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    10 June 2010
    First published in:
    1798
  • This journal, kept by a soldier in the Light Dragoons of the voyage to 'China and Tartary' in the years 1792–1793, was published in 1798. Holmes kept his diary during the attempt by Lord Macartney to establish an embassy in China. Macartney returned to Britain unsuccessful, heightening western curiosity about this secluded and mysterious nation, and so this account by a soldier assigned to Lord Macartney's guard remains an important historical source on Europeans in China during this period. While, as the editor's preface admits, the text is not of great literary significance ('written by a worthy, sensible, but unlearned man'), its authenticity and soldier's-eye perspective make it a valuable document for historians today. The journal starts with H. M. S. Lion setting sail from Portsmouth, and ends with its return to British shores; the author notes diverse cultural features of the countries visited, and gives geographical references.

Page 5 of 5