Chin Ling the Chinese Cricket

Dark tan cloth boards with dark forest green text to the cover and spine. The boards and spine are in very good condition with no blemishes or edge wear with just a bit of bumping at the top and bottom of the spine. Corners are slightly bumped with a bit of wear at the tips. Spine is firm with no cracking to the endpapers, although front and rear endpapers show age wear. Text block is solid with all pages firmly attached. Slight age tanning throughout and some darkening along the page edges. All interior pages are clean with no tears, cracks, or previous owner marks. Fully illustrated with full page color and intext color and black & white illustrations. Unpaginated but approximately 48 pages.

Alison Stilwell (Cameron) (1921 – 1991) daughter of famous World War II General Joseph Stilwell spent her early childhood and teenage years in China while her father served three tours as the military attaché at the U.S. Legation in Beijing from 1935 to 1939 (he later returned to China in 1941 during WWII). She studied under two renowned Chinese artists – Yu Fei-am and Prince P'u of the Imperial family. At 17 she held her first one-woman show at the Peking Institute of Fine Arts where a leading Chinese art critic described her as "the first Occidental to grasp the feel and technique of Oriental Art." Besides her artistic work she went on to be an author (this book and one on Chinese Painting Techniques), a lecturer on China, a military wife (to Col. William Cameron), a mother, and a Senior Fellow Emeritus and board member of the Ching Ling Foundation and the Monterey Institute of International Studies.