China by Harry Alverson Franck — Read

We could easily imagine ourselves in an airplane when looking down upon the great Yang-tze plain from Kuling, four thousand feet above it. Most of the summer the river was so full that it overflowed its banks and flooded much of the surrounding country. But we could still tell which was the real river, by the darker yellow of it, as it wound away across the green country like a gigantic snake. On the other side of our mountain we could look down upon the great lake of Poyang, the largest in China. The Tung Ting Hu, farther up the Yang-tze, is sometimes called the largest; but it is so only when the flooding Yang-tze fills it during the summer.

Far away across Poyang Lake lies a city that ought to be more famous than it is, for it is the china-town of China, where nearly all the best Chinese porcelain has been made for hundreds of years. Yet many foreigners who know that the most wonderful porcelains on earth have always been made in China have never heard of Kingtehchen, and millions of Chinese themselves do not know its name. That is what comes of a city's being so far away from a railroad or any other modern form of transportation that only those who are willing to endure hardships can reach it. As the crow flies it is only about a hundred miles from Kuling to Kingtehchen, but it took me longer to get there than it does to go from New York to Salt Lake City.