South from China

Abstract

The last lap of my China travels took me to Nanning, in the Chuang Autonomous Region of south China. The Chinese-Vietnamese border lay only one hundred miles to the south, and when the opportunity of a brief visit to North Vietnam was offered to me I eagerly accepted. Few Western observers had visited the country since the restoration of peace; moreover, Vietnam was of major interest to me as a geographer because its great rice growing area in the Red River Lowland is a classic example of the intensive agriculture of East Asia and because the country illustrates on a smaller scale the problems and difficulties China faced five or six years ago.

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