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Self-taught over a seven-year period, Brown says Chinese was the hardest of his languages to learn - while Arabic, another tongue that foreigners find extremely challenging, he found easier to learn than French. "In Arabic there are no irregular verbs, and there are only 28 characters," he says. "Compared to Chinese, it's a breeze."

Brown recounts his adventures in a breezy style, regularly referencing China's growing economic importance in the world to the lives of ordinary citizens he meets. He took notes like mad for his blog, 44days.net, but by the time he got home he'd recorded 80,000 words - more than half of those into his cellphone - and decided he had to write a book.

"The thing that blew me away on the trip," he says, "was how the people - even in the remote places - were so much more sophisticated and tolerant in their dealing with an outsider like me.

"In 1990, foreigners were viewed like zoo creatures. I really could sense that the 'cultural revolution' (1966-76) had generated a lot of lingering mistrust," he says.

"Now, even in a place like Guizhou - where I was still quite exotic - people were not only very nice but generous, too. People greeted me, helped me, bought me stuff, gave me stuff," he says. In Chishui - the city in Guizhou province he considers to be "the real Shangri-La" - he roamed in an open-air market where the merchants included a working dentist and sellers of rice, tea, bamboo and Maotai.

"I stayed all day and ate like a king," he says. "Later when I was ready to go to Guiyang, a man jumped up and went to buy the train ticket for me!"

Guizhou province was a favorite destination, Brown says, but he hopes that even better experiences await him. This summer he will go to the US for a family wedding, he says, but he's already making plans for a new China road trip in 2015, where he plans to see "new" provinces and regions including the Guanxi Zhuang autonomous region, Hunan, Henan and Anhui.