Monday, September 17, 2018

INTRODUCTION: REVISITING THE 1920s/30s EXPEDITIONS OF BOTANIST JOSEPH ROCK IN WESTERN CHINA


I have been using this blog as a trekking diary for my treks in the footsteps of Joseph Rock in Yunnan and Sichuan over the last decade or so. I had been meaning to compile them all and publish them as an e-book - but ... well that didn't work out. So instead here are the original posts arranged in some kind of chronological order, with a few photos. Bear in mind that these are the draft posts as written at the time, and I was using a film camera most of the time (remember Kodak film?).

How to use it:

There are 14 chapters. Scroll down for the next chapter, and click Older Post at the bottom of the page to find the next ones. Or use the Chapter index on the right hand side of the page.

Originally it had a bit of a then-and-now theme between the 1920s and the 1990s.  But of course I've been doing this caper so long now that the blog has ironically become a record of how China was before the era of mass tourism - and kind of then vs now for the 1990s vs the 2010s. Just look at Lijiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge back then before the roads and the crowds!

One of the problems with the book was that even when I'd covered most of the Rock trips and started  writing them up it took so long that I'd did MORE trips to add in to the original. So the timeline jumps around a bit.

And since finishing the diaries I've been back to do cycling trips and other stuff, like making a TV documentary.

If you want to know more about the treks, search the site for maps etc. There are many  posts detailing the practical aspects of the trips.

Any questions, beijingweek AT gmail.com

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