近代中国是一段弥漫着炮火硝烟的屈辱历史，也是一段充满着探索救国道路努力的奋斗历史，一个特殊的群体——西方传教士在这段不平凡的历史背景中扮演着重要而复杂的角色。本书作者何德兰真实地记录了在华旅居的见闻，透过这本书读者可以真真切切地看到晚清宫廷内的皇室生活情况，看到实实在在的民间百姓生活的景象，作者文笔流畅，描写恰到好处，会给读者带来全新的阅读历史体验。

Originally published in 1909, when in the Preface it was said: "Until the past ten years a study of Chinese court life would have been an impossibility. The Emperor, the Empress Dowager, and the court ladies were shut up within the Forbidden City, away from a world they were anxious to see, and which was equally anxious to see them. Then the Emperor instituted reform, the Empress Dowager came out from behind the screen, and the court entered into social relations with Europeans." For twenty years and more Mrs. Headland had been physician to the family of the Empress Dowager's mother, the Empress' sister, and many of the princesses and high official ladies in Peking. She had visited them in a social as well as professional way, had taken her friends, to whom the princesses had shown many favours, and they had themselves been constant callers at their home. It was to his wife, therefore, that Issac Taylor Headland was indebted for much of the information contained in this book.

Issac Taylor Headland (1859-1942), a resident of Beijing and a scholar at Peking (Beijing) University, joined other contemporaries interested in both popular culture and folklore in his own study of daily life in China. He was particularly concerned with the collection and transcription of Chinese children's rhymes.