The author explores his China curios, some tangible, like opium pipes and cricket ‘palaces’, some intangible, like memories and dreams. His ‘cabinet of curiosities’ contains a whole anthology of strange tales; of the erotic adventures of the ‘Old Buddha’ Empress Dowager, of two extraordinary foreign hermits in China, of murder and mystery in the ‘Badlands’ of Beijing and the demi-monde of Chinese theatre and of poignant ruins that serve both as witnesses to the tragedy of past East-West encounters and as potential sources of future understanding