The book, originally published in 1893, is the vivid first-hand account of Dr. Louis Pichon’s two-month journey from Hanoi to southern Yunnan in spring 1892. Part travelogue, part tract, it urges development of France’s relatively new Protectorate of Tonkin. The text spans a variety of genres and takes up a number of issues of urgent concern for the colony’s economic development. The improvement of transportation links with China lies at the center of Pichon’s exhortations, and he discusses the future of trade and industry in the region with the passion of a convert. A medical doctor by profession, he also deals with the ravages of plague, with insalubrity, and ill health. A tale of colonial ambitions and attitudes, this highly readable account will appeal not only to specialists of Vietnam and Yunnan but to any reader keen to voyage in the “exotic” regions of northern Vietnam and southern China of some hundred years ago.

1999, White Lotus Press, paperback, 142 pp., as new.