England Through Chinese Eyes

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22444, 13 June 1936, Page 6 (Supplement)

England Through Chinese Eyes

KINDLY HOME-TRUTHS ABOUT NATIONAL DEFECTS

TPUROPEAN writers are free in their criticisms of China; so by way of very friendly retaliation I am taking the liberty of expressing, among other things, my own brief impressions of your great and noble England, and its people, says a Chinese writer in an English daily newspaper. What a strange way of presenting one person to another you have in England. " How do you do?" and the answer is another " How do you do?" This amused mo immensely when I visited your country. I would like our Chinese children to see the care and attention given to animals in England. They would learn a lot. This was a point that impressed me tremendously in England, especially in your hunting counties. The Chinese adore their birds, but have little sympathy for dogs and cats and horses. I am ashamed to confess that, as a race, in general (myself excepted among thousands of others), we do not have time for domestio animals, preferring to shower our affection on our ever-growing population of babies. It seemed odd to me to see British fathers playfully boxing and enjoying all kinds of games with their youngsters. This horrified me. In my Chinese mind, I asked, " How can sons and daughters grow up to respect and obey such parents, who inspire no fear at all?" Never, never would a Chinese father subordinate himself to such procedure, for to play with his little ones would, speedily cost him his dignity and respect and control over his offspring.

baby girls. In Tien-Tsin, Shanghai, and, i I repeat, wherever there is European ! or American influence, one sees fewer and fewer bound feet. In a quiet moment in Oxford I asked an intimate English student friend: " Tell me, how would you yourself define a really nice English girl worth marrying?" Like other averago English young men I had met, he confessed that this girl must preferably have a university degree, be ablo to dance divinely, and have a golf handicap. Her capacity as housewife was unimportant, my friend continued. . . " because housework and cooking are ordinary and any paid servant can do that." Y ou see > your sports-mad English youth evidently forgets the years to come, of the time when he will be decently compelled to remain married to a wife who will be too old and weak to continue to be sporty! Far better is the way of our Chinese parents who, older in experience than wo, choose carefully a really fitting wife for their son—a woman to bear children—not a woman who is trying to ho man's equal. We Chinese drink little wine and few cocktails, and my English friends, perhaps, thought mo unsociable in this respect. Politely, instead, they gave me

It's the song ye sing and the smiles ye wear, That's a-makin the sun shine everywhere.

many cups of strong tea, not as we have at home, sugarless jasmin-per-fumed green tea without milk or lemon. The cream or milk and sugar you put in your tea completely destroy all the good taste of tho actual tea. The average Britisher, with every facility for intellectual culture at his very door, is often indifferent to educational advancement, but we Chinese, when we leave childhood behind, are not so lazy. We like to drain dry the cup of knowledge, for learning is above tho price of rubies, and is worshipped in mj country. Being fairly tall and broadly-built for a Chinese, 1 was told in Britain that 1 looked English, and so they forgave me for being only a Chinese, of a civilisation centuries older than theirs 1 Nevertheless, I candidly confess that, in general, tho Englishman at homo is infinitely more sympathetic and modest than ho is out in China. In conclusion, and in all sincerity, right from my Oriental heart, I may say that I am but one of tho millions of thinking Chinese who are eager to cross the great invisible bridge that separates the East from the West.

Your girls are bright, gay, unafraid and healthy-looking, but much too independent, and appear outwardly not to be at all in need of male protection. I would not say their feet are big, because some of my own countrywomen's feet are unnatural-looking stumps, having been tightly bound since the age of five or six yeare, and not since birth, as some Europeans are apt to believe. When these small-footed girls become of marriageable age, boys' parents will consult together and say, " is a girl with small aristocratic feet fit to be a good wife for our son." This age-old custom is hard to die among ancient families of dignified Pekin and other places unaffected by European or American influence. Nevertheless, at the present time, countless European-educated Chinese mothers refuse to submit to this custom for their