History has largely forgotten the Lincheng Outrage, a sensational 1923 bandit attack and hostage crisis.

Pirates of the Peking Express

The extraordinary, little-known story of the bandits who hijacked a Chinese sleeper train full of Westerners, including a Rockefeller heiress, on its way to Beijing

By James M. Zimmerman

Photo illustration by Chop Choppish Shop

All in all, travel on the regular routes is as safe in China as in any other part of the world. Robbers and pirates exist, of course, and there is usually a revolution or rebellion going on in some part of the country, but these things add zest rather than danger to the journey. —The Travelers’ Handbook for China, 1921

After the Revolution of 1911 ended more than 2,000 years of imperial rule in China, the country ruptured into regional political factions, each jockeying for power in a constant state of internecine warfare. The armies of the provincial military warlords dominated the countryside as the hapless leaders of the Republic of China in Peking struggled to maintain a semblance of control over a fractured nation. The warlord armies obeyed no higher authority than the warlord himself.