In 1894, a 32-year-old Australian doctor named George Morrison donned Chinese robes, attached a false queue to the inside of his cap, and set off on an epic journey from Shanghai to Burma. Up the Yangtze, over stony paths across the wilds of Sichuan and Yunnan, through the Shan states to the frontier of British India, Morrison's trek was an extraordinary achievement, and the book he wrote about it, An Australian in China, is a travel classic. Written with a straightforward style and a keen sense of humor, the book helped set Morrison on course to become the most famous newspaper correspondent in the Orient.
