The Author

Van Braam was born in 1739 in the province of Utrecht，the Netherlands，and served in the navy until 1759，when he joined the East India Company and sought his fortune in Canton and Macao，China.His interest in China presumably dated from this period.[2]But the 1760s were not a good time for Western visitors to China.The empire was intoxicated with its recent prosperity and paid little attention to foreigners，who in the eyes of the Chinese bureaucrats were“uncivilized.”

Van Braam stayed in Canton for about fifteen years with only two brief returns to his native land.No evidence shows that he entered inland China during his long stay in the southern cities，which were open to foreigners at the time.Inspired by the news of the American revolution，he decided to move to the United States and was appointed Dutch consul to North Carolina，South Carolina，and Georgia.He settled down in Charleston and started to operate a rice plantation.Four years after becoming a naturalized American citizen，van Braam decided to leave for China again，partly because of a series of tragic events affecting his family.He arrived in Canton in the summer of 1790，and soon heard the news that George Ⅲ had sent his representatives to the Manchu monarch，Ch'ien-lung.With much difficulty，he had himself appointed the second ambassador to visit Peking on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of Ch'ien-lung's reign in 1794.At that point van Braam was fifty-five years old.

He returned to Philadelphia early in the winter of 1795，half a year after the trip to Peking.He bought a farm at Mount Bergen near Bristol in Pennsylvania where he built a fifteen-room house which he named China's Retreat.He took pains to maintain the lifestyle he had enjoyed in Canton.Because of the great variety of objects he brought back from China，this site was regarded as“undoubtedly the first comprehensive Chinese collection seen in the United States.”[3](https://www.daowen.com)

But van Braam was not financially successful in the United States.His wife divorced him，and he had to auction off the beloved articles he had brought back from China only three years before.Van Braam died in 1801 in Amsterdam.The auction catalogue prepared by Christie's survived him，[4]inducing memories about the legendary trip of this former second ambassador to the“unknown land”exactly two hundred years ago.