William Mesny

Mesny left home at the age of twelve to sail the oceans until finally, after visiting India and Australia, he settled in a turbulent China in 1860.

He also visited Tonking (now northern Vietnam) and accompanied Captain William Gill on his expedition in 1877 from Chengdu to Burma via Litang, Batang, Dali, along the Tibetan borderlands to Bhamo.

He wrote an informative history of "Tungking" – now northern Vietnam, which also includes details of the Black Flag Army, a pro-Chinese militia then fighting the French occupation.

In his later life he periodically produced a sort of weekly newspaper or journal in Shanghai called Mesny's Chinese Miscellany.

It was composed of his reminiscences of his life and adventures, snippets of recent news, and thousands of brief articles and notes on a very wide variety of topics relating to China.