Writer and frequent visitor has seen the dramatic changes and felt the country's romantic lure, Paul Tomic reports.

Since his first visit to China almost 40 years ago, David Leffman has repeated the experience so many times that he estimates he has spent about four years in the country in total.

As a photojournalist and travel writer, a large part of his life has revolved around visiting and writing about locations as varied as Iceland, Indonesia, Australia and China.

Having traveled extensively in the Middle Kingdom, Leffman says the south and southwestern areas, particularly the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, remain his favorite parts of the country. "I love the landscapes, the unusual history — (in the past) the mainstream influence was often remote so far from the capital — and the peoples. The food is pretty good too, but you could say that about most of China," he says with a laugh.

His years of writing about the country have cemented a reputation as someone with a fine eye for detail, a strong grasp of Chinese history and an appreciation of traditional art, with two forms receiving particular attention. "I enjoy reading about all aspects of Chinese art, but my focus is mostly on woodblocks and folk embroideries," he says.

Leffman's introduction to China came in a roundabout way as a teenager in his native United Kingdom.

"In 1980, I was doing a course in history of art, and I needed a special study topic for a 'thesis'. I came across Japanese woodblock prints at an exhibition at Bristol University, and was so fascinated by their aesthetic — which is completely different to European art — that I taught myself to cut and print woodblocks. It was 1995 before I discovered that the process had actually been invented in China and the Japanese had simply borrowed the techniques. From that point on, I began collecting the prints," he recalls.

Bitten by the bug

In 1982, his interest in China was definitely piqued when he saw the Jet Li movie Shaolin Temple, which led him to start learning martial arts, especially tai chi. He finally got to make his first trip to the country in 1985, thanks to a small inheritance that funded the journey. He persuaded his tutors at the London College of Printing (now the London College of Communication) where he was studying photography to allow him to travel during term time to undertake a photojournalism project.

He recalls that first visit — made during the early years of the reform and opening-up policy — as "alienating, overwhelming, filthy and depressing", although he concedes that was mainly because he was determined to travel to less-developed areas and also because he spoke no Mandarin, so basic amenities were hard to arrange.

He found life easier during subsequent visits, though, as China was developing in leaps and bounds, and also because he addressed the language problem by taking intensive Mandarin courses at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and Sichuan University in Chengdu, the provincial capital.

His photojournalism experience in China was rewarded when the publishers of the Rough Guides travel series selected him to write about the southwest of the country.

That first assignment sparked an ongoing fascination with Guangxi and the provinces of Guizhou, Sichuan and Yunnan. In addition to the Chinese mainland, Leffman has written guides to Hong Kong and Macao, and has even ghosted a cookbook for a Chinese author.

He estimates that he has visited China more than 15 times since those early trips, often in the company of his wife, spending his time traveling, observing, learning and writing about a country that continues to fascinate him. Each visit usually lasted about six months, occasionally broken into two blocks, but the longest was nine months.

"So far, the best moment was finally seeing golden monkeys after 14 years spent looking for them (obviously in the wrong places). The worst was being a passenger in a bus which ran somebody over," he recalled in a previous interview with China Daily.

Artistic endeavor

In Paper Horses, his latest book, he shares his love of woodblock prints. The book provides an overview of prints of gods from North China from about 100 years ago, when the industry was in full swing.

At the time, almost every large town and city in the country was home to print shops where millions of the artifacts were effectively mass-produced every year. To send their wishes to the relevant deities, people either burned the hugely popular prints or hung them in strategic locations, imploring the gods to look kindly upon their endeavors and guarantee security, good fortune, full bellies and fruitful harvests among other things.

In part, the book was written as an attempt to quantify the author's knowledge of the topic, which he had gleaned from a variety of sources over many years.

"I had already been introduced to the confusing wealth of Chinese gods through the work of the late Keith Stevens in the UK, Ronni Pinsler — an avid collector of Chinese deity statues who lives in Malaysia and runs the website www.bookofxianshen.com — and the temples that I'd visited in China over the years," he says.

"But coming across an album of 80 deity prints a few years ago encouraged me to do my own research into specific gods so I could understand what I was looking at. It's an enormous subject, though, including a study of their overall history, the practical side of deity worship and folk ritual and religion, so I'll never get a handle on it all — mainly because so many other things about China interest me, too."

That wide-ranging interest is reflected in the articles he writes related to Chinese history that are posted on his website, www.davidleffman.com, and frequently published in newspapers and journals across the globe.

Leffman's previous book, The Mercenary Mandarin was a biography of William Mesny, a British adventurer who arrived in Shanghai as a penniless sailor in 1860 and went on to perform a wide number of jobs, including journalist, newspaper publisher, social chronicler, bridge designer (one of his creations remains in use today), customs inspector, hotelier and blacksmith. Eventually, and improbably, he became a general in the army of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), a position he used to travel extensively throughout China and visit the border areas with Siam (now Thailand) and Burma (now Myanmar).

Mesny was a fascinating character because, unusually for a European at the time, he spoke fluent Mandarin, had two Chinese wives (at different times, of course) and was genuinely untainted by notions of Western superiority. Moreover, he knew many of the leading figures of his day, including Zhang Zhidong, China's first industrialist, and was highly influential in the country's development at the time.

While he was working on the biography, Leffman followed Mesny's travel routes around China, and during the 15 years it took him to research and write the book, he was in prime position to notice the rapid pace of development. The improvements made his own journeys far easier than those of his subject, who endured desert heat, intense cold that left him with frostbite, poor food and even worse lodgings, all the while precariously perching his squat, ample frame on the back of a donkey as he crisscrossed the then-backward country.

"I have seen major changes in China on every trip since 1985, especially in the infrastructure. For instance, it used to take days to travel from Hong Kong to Guilin (in Guangxi), involving a slow train to Guangzhou (in Guangdong province), an overnight river ferry to Wuzhou, then an eight-hour country bus ride to Guilin. In 2019, I caught a direct train from downtown Hong Kong to Guilin in just 3.5 hours — less time than it used to take just to reach Guangzhou," Leffman notes.

Still on the road

The COVID-19 pandemic has curtailed travel to many parts of the world, including China, so Leffman has recently been trekking around the UK feeding his love of wildlife and natural scenery by visiting relatively remote spots in his home islands. However, in 2024 he plans to head to India to look for rhinos, gibbons and tigers as part of celebrations for his 60th birthday.

At present, he is working on a book that will examine Sino-British relations during the 19th century, the period of history he outlined so well in his biography of Mesny. However, given the extended period it took to complete that book, he and his readers will probably be hoping for a speedier conclusion to his efforts this time around.

Contact the writer at paultomic@chinadaily.com.cn

Fact box

Name: David Leffman

Nationality: British

Education: London College of Printing

Occupation: Photojournalist and travel writer

Publications: The Mercenary Mandarin; Paper Horses; (Rough Guide series) China, Southwest China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iceland, Australia; DK Eyewitness China; Top10 Iceland