Often a reader of earlier publications realises he has stepped into a world which no longer exists. The south western province of Yunnan is home to a greater variety of ethnic groups than any other Chinese province. As the eastern foothills of Tibet, its mountainous terrain is bisected by deep north-south ravines, being the headwaters of some of the great rivers of east and southeast Asia. Into this forbidding terrain, in late 1909 came botanist George Forrest, to explore the region of the Upper Salween, home of the Lisu. Chinese authority was weak in the area, often fading out completely, for this was almost two years before the first Chinese Revolution, and decades before the great transformation of Lisu society. Essentially, the botanist had stepped into a forgotten corner of the world, where poverty, filth, violence, vice, and superstition had held sway for hundreds of years.
