Description

Here is the remarkable story of James Lee who, starting in 1895, spent 20 years pursuing all the pleasures and dangers that The Far East had to offer. He travelled with an open mind more in common with our modern times and recorded with stunning candour, and great insight, a world where few of his contemporaries dared to venture. His voice speaks vividly across time.Our jaded palates are presented with the sort of Orient of The Mind which we imagine far more often than we get. A twilight world of drug dens, ports and secret chambers of vice from Aden to Kyoto. Our guide is not some prurient flaneur protesting his shock and disbelief at every step but a mining foreman from Yorkshire in England who, during the course of the book, is largely preoccupied with smoking, swallowing and injecting as many drugs as possible.