Fulfilling a lifelong dream, Christopher West escapes to China as one of the first solo Western tourists. Travelling by train, bus, boat and bicycle, West meets peasants, racketeers, monks, young entrepreneurs and veteran revolutionaries. He writes with warmth and understanding about the people who are building a future in a land defined by its past, testing his Western values and beliefs against those of the world's oldest civilisation.

Journey to the Middle Kingdom is a classic evocation of backpack travel: the humour, the comradeship, the mix-ups, the moments of darkness, but above all the mysterious power of the strange and the beautiful.