Twelve years in China Book

Wow where to even start with this one.

I found it when reading a HackerNews thread a while back. I liked the idea of looking at life a few hundred years ago through the journal of a religious man of the traveling through China.

Overall, the book is a little hard to read because there are many phrases which are just a little off or a take a moment to get used to. However, I did quite enjoy decoding some of the strange phrases and exciting troubles they faced. It seems like back in the day everyone was always conning the con man (or at least one upping them). Seeing these little tiffs play out is quite fun.

Perhaps the most enjoyable of these tiffs was the story of a moneychanger trying to scam someone and then getting scammed himself and calling for help. To read it just look for the phrase "fifity-two" in the book around page 117.

If anyone would like to read this book it's public domain so you can find legally free copies online.



Some things I liked in the book:
By a law among the Tartars, when animals are lost from a caravan, the persons occupying the nearest encampment are bound either to find them or to replace them.

no innkeeper, if he can avoid it, will receive camels into his stables at all :their size occupies great space, and their appearance almost invariably creates alarm among the other animals

You take half-an-ounce of mercury, which you mix with old tea-leaves, previously reduced to paste by mastication.

Already more than once, on our journey, the intractable, obstinate temperament of Samdadchiemba had been the occasion of our losing our way.

It [camels] seems to feel that joy or recreation are not within its portion; that its inevitable career is forced labour and long fastings, until death shall relieve it.

They use the hump, however, which, cut into slices, and dissolved in tea, serves the purpose of butter.

This layman seemed to be about fifty years old, but his height did not exceed three feet. On the top of his head, which terminated like a sugar-loaf, rose a small tuft of badly combed hair; a grey, thin beard descended in disorder down his chin.

Every Mongol knows the number, the name, and the position of the bones which compose the frame of animals; and thus they never break the bones when they are cutting up an ox or a sheep.

"True"

Our animals were, at the very least, as absorbed with the subject as ourselves. The horse and the mule pointed their ears, and dug up the earth with their hoofs, while the camels, with outstretched necks and glaring eyes, did not for an instant remove their gaze from the spot whence these wild cries issued.

we had to leave our lame dog on the bank, for the Mongols would not admit it on any terms, insisting upon the rule that all dogs must swim across the river, the boat being destined solely for men, or for animals that cannot swim.

It was for us a singular spectacle to see parties of moustachioed men sitting before the door of their houses in the sun, knitting, sewing, and chattering like so many female gossips

Nobody walks the streets without a great sabre at his side, and without affecting, at least, a fierce determination to use it on the shortest notice. Not an hour passes without some street combat.