Immersed in Chinese society for nearly thirty years, Patrice Fava has crisscrossed China and made many important discoveries in remote, rarely visited regions. His memoir aims to dissipate the western world’s overall ignorance of Chinese culture and its roots.

From the inland region of Shandong, where his Chinese family lives, to the Hakka fortresses of Fujian; from the village of Zhang Guying to Immortal Gemountain; from the White Cloud Temple to the Miaofeng pilgrimage path, he introduces readers to a China that few foreigners know.

Since the opening up of the 1980s, when the government tried to end Maoist isolationism, Chinese society as a whole has been ceaselessly reinventing itself. It is this unofficial China that the author has devoted himself to exploring.

Numerous references to the work of sinologists, particularly Kristofer Schipper and Simon Leys, as well as anthropologists and historians like Philippe Descola, Bruno Latour and Marcel Gauchet enable the author to shine a truly novel light on Chinese society’s complex realities, the historical depth and theoretical foundations of which are rarely grasped by outsiders.