“If one has the art, then a piece of celery or salted cabbage can be made into a marvelous delicacy; whereas if one has not the art, not all the greatest delicacies and rarities of land, sea, or sky are of any avail.” ―a Beijing cook , nineteenth century from Chinese Roundabout The spirit of adventure is at the heart of Jonathan Spence's widely acclaimed scholarship on the modern history of China. This vitality, fleshed out with deep research and attired in elegant style, has drawn countless readers to subjects otherwise approachable only by experts. Through eight books, from the story of the early eighteenth century Manchu bondservant Ts'ao Yin to his magisterial history, The Search for Modern China , Spence has made the excitement of intellectual discovery palpable for us all. In the course of his fruitful career Spence has written many shorter pieces as well, and the best of these are collected for the first time in Chinese Roundabout . Here the reader will meet Arcadio Huang, the Chinese linguist and Christian convert who moves from south China to Enlightenment Paris, marries a French woman, and in conversations with Montesquieu becomes the likely source for the Persian Letters. The poignant story of Huang's hard-won success and final defeat by poverty and disease illustrates the perils of crossing cultures. Spence's delight in intellectual risk animates his Shakespearean approach to the life of the great Qing emperor in "The Seven Ages of K'ang-hsi." Spence's great learning informs an authoritative essay on China's tragic experience with opium. Following the social process of addiction from the cultivation of poppies and the processing of the drug through its introduction by the British into China, its widespread distribution and consumption by Chinese, and the public struggle to suppress opium use, Spence explores issues of historical and contemporary interest. In an equally substantial piece he focuses on the cultural dimensions of food in Qing China, illuminating the marginal diet of a peasantry constantly threatened by famine as well as the grand banquets of the literati and the imperial household. In the work of 25 years, Spence has established himself as a brilliant interpreter of modern Chinese history. His books―among them the recent national bestseller The Search for Modern China ―exhibit uncommon imagination, unobtrusive learning, verve, and elegance. These same qualities animate the essays gathered here.

回顧大半生，我覺得自己畢竟是一個二十世紀人。對於二十一世紀，我沒有期望，只覺得我的二十世紀尚未完結。這本回憶錄，也是我為自己的二十世紀寫的備忘錄。
我在書裡追憶自己的成長過程和漫長的求學經驗，並特別把在普林斯頓、芝加哥、哈佛等美國六間大學任教的經驗也和求學連在一起，美其名曰「遊學」。我跟著「成長小說」的模式，寫我的生命經驗，而不是歷數學術上的成就。最後還冒然加上一章「感情史」，算是我的「感情教育」。
對我而言，回憶錄的結構可以自由一點，像一部尚未剪接的影片。我時常邀請一位虛擬的提問者，像作曲法中的「對位」一樣，向我提問、質詢、駁詰，逼我作自我反省。即使有些章節用的是獨白，我心中還是有一個沉默的對話者。本書的第二部分是我與張歷君的對談，他會進一步引出我對自己學思歷程和閱讀經驗的反思。
想在這個二十一世紀「全球網絡化」的世界中去重尋二十世紀的個人生命意義，作沉靜的反思，幾乎是不可能的事。即便如此，我還是想寫下去，至少要證實自己還存在。