When Winchester wrote the book, he used Chongqing, then in Sichuan province, as a base and traveled to places Needham had visited in the 1940s, including Dunhuang in Gansu province and Xiamen in Fujian province.

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Some academics argue that many Chinese writers well-known in the West now live outside China and wrote their books long ago, and that this hinders Western understanding of China. But Winchester thinks too much is made of the academic view of China.

"I am a great believer in a boots-on-the-ground approach to recording life in China and feel more academics should leave their ivory towers and head for the streets and the villages."

His first visit to China was a little more than 30 years ago as a reporter, when the then British foreign secretary, Geoffrey Howe, traveled to the country to take part in preliminary talks on the future of Hong Kong.

"I was struck back then by the dusty quietness of the city we called Peking," Winchester says. "Of the tens of thousands of cyclists, all pedaling as one along the great streets of the capital, and the monochrome nature of the city, gray skies and blue clothes."

Two friends working in Beijing as translators and interpreters, Yang Xianyi and his wife Gladys Yang, introduced him to hutong life and some of the hidden delights of the capital.

He soon fell under China's spell, and it is a passion that endures to date, he says.