Tourists play in the flower field in Xujiaying village of Laojun town in Hantai district of Hanzhong city, Northwest China's Shaanxi province, March 23, 2018.

As he approached Tzu-kuei he was impressed by Yellow Ox Mountain, proverbially changeless, with its population of wild apes, and marvelled at the Jade Void Grotto, where the sparkling interior was formed by nature into “a thousand immortals, dragons, tigers, birds, and beasts.”

It was a telegraph-boy with a wire which had been forwarded from my lodgings at Streatham.

WHEN I tell her about this, she says, “Oh, don’t be so cynical,” and pokes me in the ribs, and I’m glad she picked the one unflabby stretch of my torso.