Ernest Bramah (1868–1942), the author of The Wallet of Kai Lung (1900) and four other books on this Chinese storyteller, created a China so real and comprehensive that readers and reviewers often asked if he ever went to the Orient, to which he made a “bland, evasive reply.” In a letter to his publisher Grant Richards, dated 27 April 1923 and published here for the first time, Bramah writes that he has never been to China but it was not diplomatic to say so, for if he had lived there some would say his stories were merely translations, and if he had not been there, then they were imaginary and unreliable; thus he evaded the question.