“Why do you go on journeys to such impossible places?” is a question which I am continually asked. “Can it possibly be for _pleasure_? How can any one like,” and here the eyebrows are raised and a shade of disgust, politely veiled, is visible, “to stop in awful inns and visit cities full of dirt and smells? What is your _real_ reason for travelling in the interior of China?” Strange as it may seem to the comfort-loving Britisher, PLEASURE is the main lure to China, and a sort of basilisk fascination which is quite irresistible. Naturally, there are other reasons also—this time it was to take a young doctor niece to see what the Chinese Empire was like (we passed through thirteen out of the eighteen provinces) before she settled down to work in her own hospital. Besides this, in the interests of geography and a better understanding of the Chinese people by our own people it seems worth while for an artist to try and show what China is like at the present time. That is the reason for writing this book. I frankly own that I hate writing, but am consumed with a desire that people should know what is now going on in China. My rooted conviction is that the future of the world depends largely on what happens in China during the next decade. This is the decisive hour. An American deplored to a Chinaman the troublous condition of the country, and received a reply to the following effect: “You must have patience with us, we are only a nine-year-old Government, and, if my memory does not deceive me, the United States did not get their constitution for thirteen years.” The amazing fact is that an empire that has outlived every other world-empire of antiquity is now completely changing its whole government and institutions in a time of world-wide disintegration, and is steadily _moving forward_, despite internecine warfare. What is more remarkable still is the changing mettle of the race. Its temperamental characteristics seem to be undergoing as great a change as the social fabric. China has an inward force that is stronger than appears: her faults are so glaring that they have obscured this fact completely. She has been wise enough—unlike all other countries—to entrust certain branches of her administration to foreigners until she is capable of taking over control; these branches are the Customs, the Salt Gabelle and the Post and Telegraph Service; and she has been admirably served by them, despite some flaws in the administration. The vital need of to-day is for honest, incorruptible, educated Chinese who will save their country from their worst enemies—the self-seeking, ambitious, unscrupulous Chinese, who play off one party against another and, through fear of foreign foe as well as home treachery, are dragging China to the verge of the precipice.