China and the West

Conrad, Joseph. Victory [ID D27532].
Pt. 1, chap. 4
His owner had a face like an ancient lemon. He was small and wizened—which was strange, because generally a Chinaman, as he grows in prosperity, puts on inches of girth and stature. To serve a Chinese firm is not so bad. Once they become convinced you deal straight by them, their confidence becomes unlimited.
Pt. 3, chap. 1
It was a curious case, inasmuch as the Alfuros, having been frightened by the sudden invasion of Chinamen, had blocked the path over the ridge by felling a few trees, and had kept strictly on their own side.
Wang in his native province in China might have been an aggressively, sensitively genial person; but in Samburan he had clothed himself in a mysterious stolidity and did not seem to resent not being spoken to except in single words, at a rate which did not average half a dozen per day. And he gave no more than he got. It is to be presumed that if he suffered he made up for it with the Alfuro woman. He always went back to her at the first fall of dusk, vanishing from the bungalow suddenly at this hour, like a sort of topsy-turvy, day-hunting, Chinese ghost with a white jacket and a pigtail. Presently, giving way to a Chinaman's ruling passion, he could be observed breaking the ground near his hut, between the mighty stumps of felled trees, with a miner's pickaxe. After a time, he discovered a rusty but serviceable spade in one of the empty store-rooms, and it is to be supposed that he got on famously; but nothing of it could be seen, because he went to the trouble of pulling to pieces one of the company's sheds in order to get materials for making a high and very close fence round his patch, as if the growing of vegetables were a patented process, or an awful and holy mystery entrusted to the keeping of his race.
Chap. 11
It would be useless, for instance, to tell me that your Chinaman has run off with your money. A man living alone with a Chinaman on an island takes care to conceal property of that kind so well that the devil himself—"

Heliéna M. Krenn : The narrator speaks of a 'wonderful intuition' with which the Chinese are gifted. Frequently their detachment affects Westerner as being an expression of sadness and consequently 'sad-eyed' is an often-used modifier.
Wang proves his share in the qualities of detachment and ghostlikeness by his ability to 'vanish' and 'materialize' and by his withdrawal into safety when elements enter the scene that present a challenge to action.
The positive presentation of despotism is obvious. Its splendor asserts itself in the 'unlimited confidence' that superiors in Chinese firms demonstrate toward subordinates from the West once they have become convinced of the latter's trustworthiness.