WHAT THE CHINESE THINK OF US.
AS INSTANCES of the wonderment with which the average Chinese watch the doings of Europeans, the Frankfurter Zeitung, Frankfort, gives the opinions of a Chinaman who lives near Shanghai, and from which the following extracts are taken:— “We are always told that the countries of the foreign devils are grand and rich, but that can not be true, else what do they all come here for? It is here they grow rich. But you can not civilize them; they are beyond redemption. They will live weeks and months without touching a mouthful of rice, but they eat the flesh of bullocks and sheep in enormous quantities394. That is why they smell so badly; they smell like sheep themselves. Every day they take a bath to rid themselves of their disagreeable odors, but they do not succeed. Nor do they eat their meat cooked in small pieces. It is carried into the room in large chunks, often half raw, and then they cut and slash and tear it apart. They eat with knives and prongs; it makes a civilized being perfectly nervous. One fancies himself in the presence of sword-swallowers. “The opium poison, which they have brought us, they do not use themselves. But they take enormous quantities of weskichu and shang ping-chu [whisky and champagne]. The latter is very good. They know what is good, the rascals. It is because they eat and drink so much that they never rest. A sensible civilized person does nothing without due consideration; but the barbarians hurry with everything. Their anger, however, is only a fire of straw; if you wait long enough, they get tired of being angry. I worked for two of them. The one we used to call the ‘Crazy Flea’ because he was always jumping about; the other we named the ‘Wooden Gun,’ because he never went off, though he was always at full cock.” “They certainly do not know how to amuse themselves. You never see them enjoy themselves by sitting quietly upon their ancestor’s grave. They jump around and kick balls as if they were paid to do it. Again, you will find them making long tramps into the country; but that is probably a religious duty, for when they tramp they wave sticks in the air, nobody knows why. They have no sense of dignity; for they may be found walking with women. They even sit down at the same table with women, and the latter are served first. Yet the women are to be pitied, too. On festive occasions they are compelled to appear almost naked before every man who likes to look at them, and then they are dragged around a room to the accompaniment of the most hellish music.”