Camps and Trails in China: A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China

In 1916, a party of American scientists and hunters set out from Foochow into the unmapped wilds of Yunnan province, armed with rifles, cameras, and the ambitious goal of documenting wildlife no Westerner had ever seen. Roy Chapman Andrews, who would later become famous for his Central Asian expeditions, leads this tale of jungle trekking, high-stakes hunting, and encounters with tribes whose customs baffled and fascinated the Western mind. The narrative crackles with the thrill of the chase: tracking the elusive blue tiger through trackless jungle, photographing rare birds in dense canopies, and surviving the logistical nightmares of moving a expedition through roads that barely exist. Yet Andrews also writes with the careful eye of a naturalist, documenting flora and fauna with genuine scientific rigor even as he spins a ripping adventure yarn. The book captures a China in turmoil, the crumbling empire of Yuan Shi-kai's failed monarchy providing a shadow of political chaos behind their journey into the interior. This is exploration at its most romantic: a last gasp of the age when a determined party could still stumble upon creatures unknown to science and peoples untouched by the modern world.