A group of seven friends who call themselves the Seven Sages travel to an eastern valley, and the narrative takes the form of diary-like minutes kept by Ambrose Herbert. Through their excursions and conversations the book records encounters with landscapes, porcelain motifs and local practitioners of an ancient Chinese system of thought, blending precise observational detail with lyrical description of people and places. Scenes range from languid seaside bathing to social dinners and museum visits, and themes include aesthetic perception, cultural curiosity, the limits of European sensibility, and the playful, sometimes puzzling, reception of foreign philosophies.