Across China on Foot

By
EDWIN JOHN DINGLE
1911
IN GRATEFUL ESTEEM
DURING MY TRAVELS IN INTERIOR CHINA I ONCE LAY AT THE POINT OF DEATH. FOR THEIR UNREMITTING KINDNESS DURING A LONG ILLNESS, I NOW AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBE THIS VOLUME TO MY FRIENDS, MR. AND MRS. A. EVANS, OF TONG-CH'UAN-FU, YÜN-NAN, SOUTH-WEST CHINA, TO WHOSE DEVOTED NURSING AND UNTIRING CARE I OWE MY LIFE.
To travel in China is easy. To walk across China, over roads acknowledgedly worse than are met with in any civilized country in the two hemispheres, and having accommodation unequalled for crudeness and insanitation, is not easy. In deciding to travel in China, I determined to cross overland from the head of the Yangtze Gorges to British Burma on foot; and, although the strain nearly cost me my life, no conveyance was used in any part of my journey other than at two points described in the course of the narrative. For several days during my travels I lay at the point of death. The arduousness of constant mountaineering — for such is ordinary travel in most parts of Western China — laid the foundation of a long illness, rendering it impossible for me to continue my walking, and as a consequence I resided in the interior of China during a period of convalescence of several months duration, at the end of which I continued my cross-country tramp. Subsequently I returned into Yün-nan from Burma, lived again in Tong-ch'uan-fu and Chao-t'ong-fu, and traveled in the wilds of the surrounding country. Whilst traveling I lived on Chinese food, and in the Miao country, where rice could not be got, subsisted for many days on maize only.
My sole object in going to China was a personal desire to see China from the inside. My trip was undertaken for no other purpose. I carried no instruments (with the exception of an aneroid), and did not even make a single survey of the untrodden country through which I occasionally passed. So far as I know, I am the only traveler, apart from members of the missionary community, who has ever resided far away in the interior of the Celestial Empire for so long a time.