BOOK: China Revisited- a bundle of three books

China Revisited is a series of extracted reprints of mid-nineteenth to early-twentieth century Western impressions of Hong Kong, Macao and China. The series comprises excerpts from travelogues or memoirs written by missionaries, diplomats, military personnel, journalists, tourists and temporary sojourners.
They came to China from Europe or the United States, some to work or to serve the interests of their country, others out of curiosity. Each excerpt is fully annotated to best provide relevant explications of Hong Kong, Macao and China at the time, to illuminate encounters with historically interesting characters or notable events.

This bundle includes the following three items.

1 x Where Strange Gods Call: Harry Hervey’s 1920s Hong Kong, Macao and Canton Sojourns

1 x Wanderings in China: Hong Kong and Canton, Christmas and New Year, 1878/1879

Inveterate Victorian traveller and prolific artist Constance Gordon-Cumming roamed far and wide, from the Scottish Highlands to the American West, from the islands of Hawaii to southern China. Even among her many adventures, her 1878/1879 trip to Hong Kong was momentous: she arrived just before Christmas 1878 to inadvertently witness the terrible “Great Fire” of Hong Kong that swept devastatingly through the Central and Mid-Levels districts. She moved on to explorations of the streets, temples and Chinese New Year festivities in Canton (Guangzhou) before returning to Hong Kong for the horse races at Happy Valley in February 1879. Gordon-Cumming is that rare travel writer who, while plunging into the throngs and crowds, manages to observe the minutiae of life around her.

1 x LING-NAM: Hong Kong, Canton and Hainan Island in the 1880s

Benjamin Couch “BC” Henry was a missionary in Hong Kong and southern China in the second half of the 19th century. Yet he was much more too – a keen observer, a skilled naturalist and an intrepid explorer. The bulk of his career in China was spent in what was then commonly known as “Ling-nam”, the Pearl River Delta and environs of Guangzhou. These excerpts of LING-NAM, published in 1886, contain one of the most detailed walking tours of Guangzhou that has survived. Similarly so his travels through the silk, tea and market garden regions adjoining the metropolis.
Henry’s expeditions around Hainan Island in 1882 were then the most extensive undertaken by a foreigner. Henry’s travelogue provides one of the most in-depth looks at southern Chinese life – from the growth of Hong Kong, to the bustling streets of Guangzhou, to Hainan’s “Island of Palms”.