Here's frankly a travel book -- not a learned dissertation on the problem of the Far East. The author, a Frenchman, shows us China as he found it, the landscape, the towns, the countryside, the people, the life, the shops, the streets, the buildings. Woven throughout is running commentary on the history and the philosophy, the religions, the social and economic factors that created the thing he is seeing. It has a certain charm, a certain originality -- though it limps a bit, reads almost like an attempt to recapture the Oriental phrase and circumlocution. Possibly a translation. Limited market.