George Thomas Staunton was particularly famous for two things, One was as a 12 year old lad on Lord Macartney’s Embassy to China in 1791 where he ended up having a conversation in Mandarin with the Qianlong Emperor, rewarded with yellow silk purse from the Emperor’s belt. The other was 25 years later with the next British Embassy under Lord Amherst in 1816, where Staunton’s advice not to kowtow to the Emperor was instrumental in the Embassy being dismissed without an audience and sent packing.

Staunton wrote several works, on his father, the Amherst Embassy, translations, and late in life in 1856, his memoirs. Read about them in the attached article.