The Yangtze Valley and Beyond

0/5 ( ratings)

Isabella Bird was the most remarkable female traveller of the nineteenth century, and her subsequent travel books have become classics of the genre. Famed for extraordinary journeys which would be impressive even by today’s standards, her expeditions culminated, aged 65, in her seven-month solo exploration along the Yangtze river in China in 1896. Journeying from Shanghai to Somo, Bird completed much of the expedition in a traditional junk, sharing the same hardships that beset her hired crew: hunger, cold and loneliness. Her no-holds-barred account of this ground-breaking voyage remains unsurpassed to this day.

Following just thirty years after the end of the Second Opium War and the opening of China’s ports by British forces, foreign visitors were certainly not always welcome. Frequently verbally and physically attacked, Bird writes freely of the fear she experienced and recounts an incident when she was chased by two thousand angry, stick-wielding locals crying ‘Beat her! Kill her! Burn her! Another occasion saw her sitting astride a stool in her room, armed with a pistol that she was fully prepared to use for self-preservation; but Bird was also at times welcomed and treated without suspicion, able to provide stunning depictions of towering mountains and vast rivers, tranquil villages and ornate palaces.