Missionaries
Are you a missionary in need of some pat on the shoulder when not even the rice-Christians are showing up for service? Here comes our selection of uplifting stories from Yunnan missionaries. Just remember: the one's who never made a convert, never made it back or never made it full stop never wrote books.
Ethnobotany
Arguably, man-kind has survived much longer with gathering and swidden agriculture than it will using modern intensive industrialized farming. The books in this list go to the roots of indigenous knowledge in plant-use and hill farming. Plus one of the books tells you the mystery why hill-farmers need to understand prime numbers.
Classic Travel Reads
Easy-reading travel novels, some true, some less so. Our list of Yunnan holiday reading.
Joseph Rock
Of all the westerner who made it to Yunnan, Joseph Francis Rock was undoubtedly one of the most eccentric. A self-educated botanist and anthropologist, a recluse, a photographic pioneer, a lousy geographer and even worse writer: National Geographic's 'our man in China' left us with a string of (heavily staff-edited) NG articles and a few (almost unreadable) books. Here is our list.
History
If you are a history buff, maybe these books are for you, but probably you have read them already.
Early Maps
When Matteo Ricci, the Italian Jesuit, arrived in China in 1583, the Chinese had never
seen a map of the world. When the Jesuits were expelled in 1723, they left not the many
converts they had hoped for – but the first scientific atlas ever produced of China, with
maps so authoritative that western explorers still relied on them more than one hundred years later.
National Geographic
If your library is full of old National Geographic Magazines, then maybe try to hunt down these old articles published about Yunnan.
