1915 to 1918 was a tumultuous period of Chinese history. Generals were vying for power, warlords and rebel armies were ranging the countryside and foreign businessmen and missionaries had walled themselves in well-defended compounds. In the midst of this chaos, a twenty-four-year-old college graduate named James Archibald Mitchell, landed in Shanghai to teach English at St John’s University.

Mitchell was an avid diarist, a skilled photographer and an acute observer of local customs, and whenever he had time, he set out to explore the country, the presence of warring armies notwithstanding.