The Yangtze Valley and Beyond: An Account of Journeys in China, Chiefly in the Province of Sze Chuan and Among the Man-Tze of the Somo Territory

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Summary: A lone woman traveler in China
Review: Intrepid is the adjective that best applies to Isabella Bird. She was one of the best known travel writers of the Victorian era. She suffered from an odd probably psychosomatic disease that made her an invalid at home in Scotland -- but plant her down in China, Colorado, or Japan and give her a difficult and dangerous road to travel and she is as hardy as a bristlecone pine.

This book is about a journey Ms. Bird made about 1897 from the mouth of the Yangtze River to the Sichuan basin and the borders of Tibet. She did most of it as a solo female, accompanied only by Chinese bearers and servants, and traveling by mule, boat, foot, sedan chair, and about every other means of transport. She was more than 60 years old at the time and suffered from rheumatism.

Ms. Bird is a demon for detail and she comments on a vast range of topics during the course of her travels -- and she seems to know what she is talking about, unlike many travel writers whose accounts are embroidered and exaggerated. With Bird you have confidence that she's telling you the truth, quaint though some of her views may be.

The most interesting part of the book, in my opinion, are Ms. Bird's difficulties with Chinese officials and the public. She was beaned in the head with a rock on one occasion, which caused a "brain disturbance" that lasted a year; Chinese frequently refused to sell her food or give her shelter and officials tried to intimidate and discourage her at every opportunity. But Isabella Bird was undaunted, crossing 11,000 feet passes, weathering snowstorms, hunger, and hardship and recording her experiences in amazing detail. The book is nearly 600 pages long.

Isabella Bird's travel books are travel classics. Read this or any of her books to get a tale of exotic adventures in foreign lands -- and to wonder why this respectable female was so addicted to tramping around the world.

Smallchief