Rudolph Lechler travelled to Hong Kong as a missionary together with Theodor Hamberg in 1847. They were the two first missionaries from the Evangelical Missionary Society of Basel ( for short: the Basel Mission) who were sent to China. Lechler was commissioned to carry out missionary work in Guangdong (Canton) Province in Mainland China, to which foreigners were forbidden to travel. In addition to his activities as a missionary, the life of Rudolph Lechler in China was beset by robberies and political turmoil, including the Second Opium War and the Taiping Rebellion.
Lechler spent a total of 45 years in China, finally returning to Germany at the age of 75.
The fragment of his autobiography is preserved at the Basel Mission Archives. It ends in 1861. In this book the autobiography is available for the first time in a fully translated and readable form.