Across China on Foot
In 1909, an Englishman named Edwin John Dingle did something extraordinary: he walked across China. Not along well-trodden trade routes, but into the wild, untamed interior, from the bustling port of Shanghai deep into the lawless territories bordering Burma. This is his account of that journey, and it reads like a dispatch from a world that no longer exists. Dingle travels up the Yangtze by boat, then strikes out on foot across some of the most remote and dangerous terrain in Asia, encountering ethnic minorities, remote monasteries, mountain villages, and landscapes so rugged they defy description. But this is more than adventure writing. Dingle arrived in China at a pivotal moment - the Qing dynasty crumbling, revolution brewing - and his keen, often sympathetic eye captures a civilization in transition before it vanishes forever. His prose is vivid, his observations often surprisingly nuanced for the era, and his account remains a remarkable time capsule of a China that was already disappearing even as he walked through it.
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“I am one of those who believe that in China we shall see arising a Government whose power will be paramount in the East, and upon the integrity of whose people will depend the peace of Europe. It is much to say. We shall not see it, but our children will. The Government is going to conquer the people.””
— Edwin John Dingle
“And it may be that the new China, as we know it in the more forward spheres of activity, will only take her proper place in the family of nations after fresh upheavals. Rivers of blood may yet have to flow as a sickening libation to the gods who have guided the nation for forty centuries before she will be able to attain her ambition of standing in line with the other powers of the eastern and western worlds. But it seems that no matter what the cost, no matter what she may have to suffer financially and nationally, no matter how great the obstinacy of the people towards the reform movement, the change is coming, has already come with alarming rapidity, and has come to stay. China is changing -- let so much be granted; and although the movement may be hampered by a thousand general difficulties, presented by the ancient civilization of a people whose customs and manners and ideas have stood the test of time since the days contemporary with those of Solomon, and at one time bade fair to test eternity.””
— Edwin John Dingle
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Dingle, Edwin John. Across China on Foot. Lex, lex-books.com/book/across-china-on-foot-1c8cd94e-1c50-48dc-83c1-adc051202dd7.Dingle, E. J. (n.d.). Across China on Foot. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/across-china-on-foot-1c8cd94e-1c50-48dc-83c1-adc051202dd7Dingle, Edwin John. Across China on Foot. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/across-china-on-foot-1c8cd94e-1c50-48dc-83c1-adc051202dd7.
