Chinese Burns
CHIANG Yee.
The Silent Traveller in Edinburgh. [Edinburgh, Constable, for] London, Methuen, 1948.
8vo, pp. ix, [1], 196, [2], with a half-title, a colour frontispiece and nineteen colour plates, black and white illustrations within the text; a very good copy, in the original publisher’s pale yellow cloth, front board lettered in blue in Chinese, spine lettered in English; some spots to head of front cover, spine slightly darkened; in a very good jacket, spine slightly browned, with chip at head, blue abrasion marks to rear cover; presentation inscription ‘蔣彝 with best wishes Chiang Yee’ to front endpaper.
First edition, signed, of this unusual Edinburgh travelogue by an exiled Chinese writer and artist, illustrated throughout by the author with sketches and paintings in his distinctive style.
Born in Jiujiang in central China, Chiang Yee (1903–1977) left his war-torn country of birth in 1933 to study in London. Thereafter he earned a living teaching at the School of Oriental Studies (now SOAS) and exhibiting in London galleries, having learnt traditional Chinese painting from his father. War followed him into exile: bombed out of his flat during the Blitz, he moved to Oxford, where he stayed for the next fifteen years, using the city as his base for a series of self-illustrated travel accounts of e.g. Oxford, the Lakes, and the Yorkshire Dales.
Into eighteen chapters (each ending in -tion or -sion) covering the sights of Edinburgh (including a visit to the National Library), Chiang intersperses many Chinese poems and anecdotes from Chinese history, and even suggests Burns could have been Chinese.