INTRODUCTORY

_The scheme_. _Why I am walking across Interior China_. _Leaving
Singapore_. _Ignorance of life and travel in China_. _The "China for the
Chinese" cry_. _The New China and the determination of the Government_.
_The voice of the people_. _The province of Yün-nan and the forward
movement_. _A prophecy_. _Impressions of Saigon_. _Comparison of French
and English methods_. _At Hong-Kong_. _Cold sail up the Whang-poo_.
_Disembarkation_. _Foreign population of Shanghai_. _Congestion in the
city_. _Wonderful Shanghai._


Through China from end to end. From Shanghai, 1,500 miles by river and
1,600 miles walking overland, from the greatest port of the Chinese
Empire to the frontier of British Burma.

That is my scheme.

* * * * *

I am a journalist, one of the army of the hard-worked who go down early
to the Valley. I state this because I would that the truth be told; for
whilst engaged in the project with which this book has mainly to deal I
was subjected to peculiar designations, such as "explorer" and other
newspaper extravagances, and it were well, perhaps, for my reader to
know once for all that the writer is merely a newspaper man, at the time