By Wu Yue

Marian Cannon Schlesinger, 104, can still recall what Beijing was like in the 1930s, when she visited China to see her sister, Wilma Cannon Fairbank, and brother-in-law, John King Fairbank.

“I fear that old Peking and all its wonderful atmosphere, the hutong (alleys), mud houses, sounds and daily life, as I knew them, have long disappeared,” Schlesinger writes in her introduction to San Bao and His Adventures in Peking.

The book’s Chinese translation, published by Beijing-based Zhonghua Book Company, was released in October, 77 years after the original in English was first published in the United States.

“I think what I caught in my little book is almost a historical record,” she adds.

Schlesinger arrived in Shanghai in 1934 after a 17-day ship journey from the US having completed her college education. Read more

Source: China Daily