Crown prince's historical China visit published in new book

On Thursday, a sharing session and book signing for Eastward Travelogue: Masters, Warlords, the Swedish Crown Prince and China in the 1920s was held during the Shanghai Book Fair.

Eastward Travelogue is a recently published illustrated nonfiction work on modern Chinese history by Zou Dehuai, a well-known history blogger and writer.

In 1926, the Crown Prince Gustav Adolf of Sweden visited China, and the photo collection gathered by his companions left behind precious visual records of the trip. Zou purchased this cache of firsthand archival materials at considerable expense, bringing to light a century-old chapter of exchanges that had long been buried.

He then spent two years immersing himself in a vast sea of historical documents, rigorously verifying every image and page of the album. The result is Eastward Travelogue, a book that features over 200 rare old photographs and offers a detailed account of the background, course and influence of the prince's visit to China.

At its heart, this is a moving story of scholars who, amid a turbulent China, cherished its culture and sought to preserve human civilization. Framed from the crown prince's perspective, the book takes readers into the complexities of 1926 China, a time of warlord strife and the rise of the Northern Expedition, a military campaign to topple the incumbent, warlord-led Beiyang government (1912-28), to reunify China.

His cultural tours through Beijing, Shanxi province, and beyond, trace the transformations of landmarks like the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and the Temple of Heaven, while weaving in encounters with prominent figures such as philosopher and politician Liang Qichao (1873-1929), Peking Opera performer Mei Lanfang (1894-1961), and warlord Yan Xishan (1883-1960), as well as major events like the announcement of the "Peking Man" fossils at the Zhoukoudian site in Beijing. Together, they paint a panoramic portrait of a society in upheaval and the people who lived through it.

"History isn't meant to be preserved for its own sake," Zou says. "More importantly, it should teach us something. When we study the joys, sorrows, smiles, and struggles of those who came before, and measure them by common sense and self-interest, we realize they weren't so different from us — they too went with the flow of the times, did their best to move forward, and tried to carve out a unique meaning for their lives."