{"product_id":"the-junks-and-sampans-of-the-yangtze","title":"The Junks and Sampans of the Yangtze","description":"\u003cp\u003eG. R. G. Worcester (1890–1969) termed himself a sailor by profession. Born in England in 1890, he entered the Royal Navy in the days of sail and rounded the Horn as a midshipman. He left the Navy in 1919 to join the Marine Department of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, and during his thirty years as River Inspector he assisted in surveying, marking, and opening the Yangtze to steam navigation to a point 1,450 miles from the sea. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThrough the intervention of Frederick Maze, Inspector General of Customs, Worcester obtained Chinese government permission to spend his time visiting every port in China to make a study of Chinese shipping from the earliest period. This was extraordinary access — a foreigner, given official clearance to go places no foreigner could normally go, to document a civilisation's entire maritime culture. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis eight years of field research were carried out during one of the most disturbed periods of China's eventful history — amidst almost continual fighting, bandit raids, enemy occupation, floods and droughts — culminating, for himself and his wife, in a three-year internment in a Japanese prison camp. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe book covers a way of life on the Yangtze that was fast disappearing as Worcester was researching it, capturing the last glimpses of a world that has almost entirely vanished. Most of the time the subject feels almost timeless, giving us a view of life on the Yangtze as it might have been lived for hundreds of years — yet every so often an element of the modern world intrudes, and it feels rather jarring — a car ferry appearing, or pleasure boats being used to escape Japanese air raids\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Bukuku Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48342998319352,"sku":null,"price":286.0,"currency_code":"MYR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0421\/3184\/9376\/files\/DISPLACCEDinGaza_85.png?v=1778134580","url":"https:\/\/thebukukupress.com\/en-id\/products\/the-junks-and-sampans-of-the-yangtze","provider":"Bukuku Press","version":"1.0","type":"link"}