This is a very attractive book and, as you would expect from Heather Angel, has stunning photography. The text, while interesting, is a bit more pedestrian. The book is a ‘celebration of China’s wilder areas’ and deals with plants, animals and landscapes. The first introductory chapter gives some background about the environment, population, development and ecotourism in China, then the remaining chapters deal with the main habitats: forests, wetland, deserts and grasslands, mountains and coastlands. The main text is interspersed with special spreads on topics such as ‘Plant hunters’, ‘Medicinal plants’, ‘Nature in Chinese art’ etc, with text on one page and a montage of small photos opposite.

Although there is a map in the introduction which shows the provinces and autonomous regions (with some spelling variations to the names used in the text) I felt it would have been useful to have more maps within the text to help locate some of the mountain ranges, nature reserves etc mentioned in the text. The text mainly talked about what plants and animals were found in each type of habitat without much other information, so it didn’t make particularly exciting reading. In fact, as far as I was concerned, the most interesting chapter was the one at the end, where Heather Angel talks about some of the logistics of her trips to China to undertake the photography for the book. ( )