Explore "China" by Harry Alverson Franck on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Not one foreigner among a thousand who come to China ever travels into the part of it we are now going to visit. Yet the least known parts of many a country are often the most interesting. It would have been better to have turned my travels about, and gone to Kansu in the summer and to the other two great western provinces of Yunnan and Szechuan south of it in the winter. But we cannot always arrange things exactly right in traveling any more than in the other affairs of life.
The usual way to Yunnanfu now is by the railway from Haiphong, chief northern port of the French colony of Indo-China. The trip takes three days, but to go in any other way would take at least that many weeks. The narrow-gauge railway, built by the French, is one of the most remarkable pieces of engineering in the world, and the scenery along the last two thirds of the way is magnificent. The trains do not run at night, so the passengers have to go to hotels. The first night is spent in the Indo-Chinese border town of Laokay and the second in the Chinese town of Amichow.