APATHETIC.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 45, 22 February 1934, Page 5

APATHETIC.

CHINESE NATION. COMPARISON WITH JAPAN. SIDELIGHTS BY A TOTJRIST. China is an apathetic nation. It is the antithesis of Japan. The junks which sail about the harbours of China to-day are the same as those which sailed 1000 years ago. There is no desire to go ahead, no will to progress. These, and many other impressions, were brought back by Mr. H. W. Frost, of Auckland, who recently returned from a tour of Japan, China, India and Burma. In the interview, he drew an interesting comparison between the standard, outlook and mode of life in China and Japan, throwing sidelights also on India and Burma. "Where, in China, the harbours are dotted with old junks, those of Japan are scattered with motor craft," said Mr. Frost. "The Japanese are scrupulously clean, and so are their cities; the Chinese are dirty, so are their cities, and so is their mode of life. There is no activity and. efficiency such as there is in Japan. What was good enough for their great-grandfathers appears to be good enough for those of the present generation. If you told a Japanese girl that she looked like a European, she would be delighted; if you told a Chinese girl the same thing, it would make no impression on her. Japan and China as nations are as wide apart as the poles. Japan is ever eager to go forward; China does not care." Swarms of Beggars. After China came India in Mr. Frost's travels. India with its countless hordes, where a white man is judged by the number of servants he keeps. A good deal of Mr. Frost's time was spent in Bombay, the second most cosmopolitan city in the world. Here, said Mr. Frost, beggar children swarm about, dozens of

them, with their hands outstretched. But a few sharp words in Maori frightened them, and they raced away in all directions. An apt description of the Bangalis was given by Mr. Frost. "They are the Irishmen of India," he said. "They are up against the military as well as the civil authorities. They are treacherous, and one never knows what they will do I next. A young Bangalis student girl shot a magistrate. She was lauded as a hero, and if she had been hanged, she would have been regarded as a martyr. "Ghandi's mana has departed. lie has lost caste altogether. After a long time the people have discovered and realised that Gliandi is an absolute fraud. He is regarded merely as a fanatic, and except by a few, he is looked upon as a joke." A good deal of inconvenicnce was caused by the method of travelling by the Indian railways, said Mr. Frost. On all railways, except the Bombay-Calcutta express, you take up your bed and travel. You take with you your own mattress, pillow, sheets, blankets, soap, towel and other toilet necessities. Road to Mandalay. "From Calcutta, you travel 800 miles by steamer to Rangoon," continued Mr. Frost. "The only industry there seems to be rice, and that is second-grade stuff. Of course, there are rubies, and teak and tin, and tung oil, but there are miles and miles of rice fields. Here again is a marked contrast. The rice fields of Japan are intensively cultivated, neat and well-tended, carefully manured with artificial mixtures. The rice fields of China, India and Burma are rough and carelessly sown.

"Burma is an interesting country. They told me that a man, his wife and two children can live on 5d a day and save money. The standard of living under those circumstances, of course, is very low. Yet thousands do it. They live on rice and all manner of fish, for which they have all manner of ways of drying. Burma is governed from Tndia, but the Burmese are now agitating to separate. It will obviously be greatly to their disadvantage if they do. It is a strange country, with its pagodas, its shrines, its mysteries, and its miles of rice. Now I can understand how Kipling cam© to write his famous 'On the Road to Mandalay.'"