The journey of a lifetime from deckhand to revered China hand

Although he didn't know it at the time, Leffman had been bitten by the China bug.

A few years later, as a fledgling author for the Rough Guides travel series, he used his photojournalism experience in China to successfully lobby the editors to send him to write about the southwest of the country. That trip sparked an ongoing love affair with the provinces of Guizhou, Sichuan and Yunnan.

In addition to China, Leffman, who lived in Queensland for 20 years and holds dual British-Australian nationality, has written guidebooks about many countries and regions, including Iceland, Australia, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Macao, and has even ghosted a cookbook for a Chinese author.

He estimates that he has visited China more than 15 times since that first trip, often in the company of his wife, and spending about three years in total, traveling, observing, learning and writing about a country that has fascinated him during the 30 years since he and I first met.

Usually, each visit lasted six months, occasionally broken into two blocks, but the longest was nine months. "The best moment was finally seeing golden monkeys after 14 years spent looking for them (obviously in the wrong places). The worst was being a passenger in a bus which ran somebody over," he recalled.

To ensure that they would be able to communicate with their interviewees, Leffman and his wife signed up for intensive Chinese courses; first at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies and later at Sichuan University in Chengdu.