he spell of the Orient knows that henceforth there is
no choice; footloose, he must always turn eastwards.

But really to see the East one must shun the half-Europeanized town and
the treaty port, must leave behind the comforts of hotel and railway,
and be ready to accept the rough and the smooth of unbeaten trails. But
the compensations are many: changing scenes, long days out of doors,
freedom from the bondage of conventional life, and above all, the
fascination of living among peoples of primitive simplicity and yet of a
civilization so ancient that it makes all that is oldest in the West
seem raw and crude and unfinished. So when two years ago my feet sought
again the "open road," it was towards the East that I naturally turned,
and this time it was China that called me. I did not go in pursuit of
any information in particular, but just to get for myself an impression
of the country and the people. My idea of the Chinese had been derived,
like that of most Americans, from books and chance observation of the
handful of Kwangtung men who are earning their living among us by
washing our clothes. Silent, inscrutable, they flit through the American
scene, alien to the last. What lies behind the riddle of their impassive
faces? Perhaps I could find an answer. Then, too, it was clear, even to
the most unintelligent, that a change was coming over the East, though
few realized how speedily. I longed to see the old China before I made
ready to welcome the new. But not the China of the coast, for there the
West had already left its stamp. So I turned to the interior, to the
western provinces of Yunnan and Szechuan. Wonderful for scenery,
important in commerce and politics, still unspoiled, there I could find
what I wanted.

Of course I was told not to do it, it would not be safe, but that is
what one is always told. A long, solitary summer spent a few years ago
among the Himalayas of Western Tibet, in Ladakh and Baltistan, gave me
heart to face such discouragement, and I found, as I had found before,
that those who knew the country best were most ready to speed me onward.
And as the following pages show, there was nothing to fear. I had no
difficulties, no adventures, hardly enough to make the tale interesting.

It is true, I had some special advantages. I was an American and a
woman, and no longer young. Chinese respect for grey hair is a very real
thing; a woman is not feared as a man may be, and hostility is often
nothing