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Very rare book. A classic travelogue through parts of Xinjiang that are now forbidden to outsiders. PB. 288pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.
This is a first-hand account of how a tall blonde Western woman travelled in disguise as a Chinese man (in Pathan cap, old grey jacket and big padded trousers), through the remote, forbidden and perilous parts of Southern China, in search of an ancient kingdom and the fabulous 2nd-century wall paintings left untouched for thousands of years.
Christa Paula, a young German student of Central Asian art and archaelogy has something of the same adventurous spirit as her friend Nick Danziger.
The area she set out to discover in 1989/90 was under military rule, closed to Westerners as well as to most Chinese, and it was in the company of Chang, a taxi-driver and self-styled Chinese James Dean, that she continued her journey.
They travelled through an area dotted with nuclear testing sites, forced labour camps, and mines in which prisoners dig and process asbestos without protective clothing.
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