20 years after “Shangri-La” was coined in the Western imagination, a Russian adventurer published a memoir from the valley of Lijiang, southwest China, that is strikingly similar yet a world apart.

In 1916, an American activist and writer traveled to China from the frontlines of World War I. What she saw in the city delighted her; what she saw in the opium trade appalled her.

‘The Travels of Marco Polo’ is often held up as the earliest Western account of China and Asia. What’s actually inside the covers might surprise you.

The British adventurer’s 1936 account of his journey across the Tibetan Plateau and Xinjiang shows its age but remains a classic of travel writing.