Jonathan Spence and his wife, fellow historian Annping Chin, are pictured in November 2005. [Photo/IC]

They planned to visit at least three Jiangnan cities, namely Suzhou in Jiangsu province and Hangzhou and Shaoxing in Zhejiang province. A Chinese proverb goes that there is heaven above, and there are Suzhou and Hangzhou below, while Shaoxing is the hometown of Zhang Dai.

Zheng had contacted his friends in the three cities in preparation for the upcoming trip. A friend in Hangzhou had even booked a dragon boat on the scenic West Lake and a lakeside hotel room with a great view.

However, three days before the Spences' flight to China, Spence fainted and was diagnosed with mild complications of Parkinson's disease.

They still planned to make the trip once Spence got better, but then came the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the first paragraph of the preface to Return to Dragon Mountain: Memories of a Late Ming Man, Spence wrote: "We might think that as Zhang Dai was growing up, such a great span of time past would have distanced him from the dynasty's roots, creating a conceptual space almost impossible to grasp; but for Zhang such a great vista of years seems to have offered, not severe dislocation, but a satisfying sense of age and constancy."

Jonathan Spence and Zheng Peikai are pictured at Spence's home in early May 2019. [Photo/thehour.cn]