I have a strong suspicion that Russia does not really know what she is up to in Chinese Central Asia

It is natural in human beings to fear the unknown and, fearing it, to overestimate its power, as well as its will, to harm. Anyone who works behind the scenes is de facto assumed to be working, with abnormal efficiency, on some deep laid plan. This may be so with Russia; but in the Soviet Union plans, however deep-laid, have to a tendency to produce results surprising to all concerned, and a policy directed by highly centralized, half trained bureaucracy and developing in the territory of a foreign Power may be less darkly potent than its cloak of secrecy suggests. I have a strong suspicion that Russia does not really know what she is up to in Chinese Central Asia, and that her activities there are guided, to an even greater extent that Japan's activities in North China and Mongolia, by opportunism  

P. Fleming, News from Tartary (1936), 263

All serious subjects, and particularly anything to do with myself, seem to me, almost as soon as they have been broached, to be not worth discussing after all

We were both reserved by nature, but Kini [Ella Maillart] was the less taciturn. I can only talk nonsense with fluency and conviction, for all serious subjects, and particularly anything to do with myself, seem to me, almost as soon as they have been broached, to be not worth discussing after all; in any case I talk badly. But Kini, in the mood, could talk extremely well and was not restrained from airing her opinions or recalling her past by any inhuman intimation that the former were worthless and the latter was a bore. This was a boon to me, for she had an interesting, rather barbarian mind, and her life had been lived in many places and all sorts of conditions.

P. Fleming, News from Tartary (1936), 173

Here the other side of the observation 

It was, furthermore, a shaggy and outlandish kind of Chinese

It was, furthermore, a shaggy and outlandish kind of Chinese. In the extreme north-west of China they speak what I take to be a variant of the Shansi dialect. it is not as incomprehensible as the southern dialects, being based closely on mandarin; but it was disconcerting to find (for instance) that 'water' was fi instead of shui, that she-me (meaning 'what') had contracted to sa, and that normen, not wormen, meant 'we'. I found myself, mutatis mutandis, in roughly the position of a Chinese who, after cursorily studying the first chapters of a modern English primer, is turned loose in the remoter parts of eighteenth century Yorkshire.

P. Fleming, News from Tartary (1936), 167

Governing seemed to be a very difficult business.

I said to myself that governing seemed to be a very difficult business. To pay the troops who kept the dictatorship in power the people were heavily taxed and rendered discontented. This was the position in Khotan. On the other hand, when a government tried to conciliate the taxpayers and be reasonable about levies, it ran short of money and the soldiers revolted, leaving the town open to the depredations of mountain bands – Kashgar’s plight! Which was better? Peter was no interested when I raised the point. He was considering an altogether different problem, which was this: who would win an English law case in which a man, suddenly raised to the peerage as Lord Bognor, brings an action against a poet for writing a tragedy with a hero bearing the hitherto unused name, it being essential for the balance of the poet’s lines to retain the name? 

E. Maillart, Forbidden journey (1935), 257

Peter thought me too serious and I did not understand British humour

We both liked to spend our leisure in the open air, he shooting, I ski-ing. … But then? Peter thought me too serious and I did not understand British humour (a serious a fault in the eyes of an Englishman as is it for a Chinaman to “lose face”). I had the bad taste to lay down the law about the art of living. Peter was bored by my craving to understand the thousands of diverse lives that make up humanity and bored, too, by my need to relate my own life to life in general. How could anybody be so crazy as to want to find out whether men’s efforts brought about an improvement in human nature? Peter was troubled by none of these things. In his imperturbable wisdom he looked on human beings as characters in a comedy.

E. Maillart, Forbidden journey (1935), 161-2