Wang Tao’s Diary: excerpts Translated by Sebastian Eicher

In a little regarded episode from Wang Tao’s diaries, the author tells us about a two-week long journey from Shanghai to Hangzhou and to the West Lake. Wang Tao undertook this journey together with the missionary Griffith John, who at that time was trying to find ways to preach the gospel outside the treaty port of Shanghai. We know the rough outline of this journey from Griffith John’s writings, as it was the second half of a longer journey along the Grand Canal. But Wang Tao’s presence and his notes on it have so far been neglected. This is a loss, as the diary Wang Tao kept offers not only a personal and lively account of the journey, it also gives us some insight in the Chinese perception of the missionaries’ activities and a description of the Hangzhou era before the Taiping would ravage it only a bit more than a year later.