It is not unusual today for a Chinese woman to travel alone in Europe or the United States, armed only with a travel guide.
But it certainly would have been early in the last century, when poet Lu Bicheng blazed a trail for the modern woman.
Lu, born in 1883, was a poet and lyricist of songs from the late Qing dynasty. She was also one of the first women journalists in China, publishing her travel writings in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin 80 years ago.
Grace Fong, of the East Asian studies department at McGill University in Canada, discovered the story of Lu in the 1980s.
'I found Lu's words about Switzerland in a journal published in the 1930s,' she said. 'Why was this woman poet talking about Switzerland in the 1930s?'
From this small find, Professor Fong began a journey in the intrepid writer's footsteps. Since 2003 she has followed Lu's travels, visiting cities across China, Europe and America, as well as Hong Kong, where Lu spent her last days before she died in 1943.