China and the West

Lin, Yutang. A talk with Bernard Shaw [ID D27973].
Bernard Shaw once looked in at Shanghai and looked out again. On the morning of his arrival, the papers reported that the local Rotary Club had decided to snub Shaw by letting him "pass unnoticed." The apparent implication was, of course, that Shaw would suffer such terrible disgrace from being passed unnoticed by the local Rotarians that he would never be able to recover his reputation. That was, of course, very intelligent on the part of the Shanghai Rotarians in view of the fact that the Hong Kong Rotarians had been worse than snubbed by Bernard Shaw. But it would have been still more intelligent to decide not to read Shaw alto- gether. Shaw had aroused, besides, such a scare among the Shanghai respectable society by urging the Hong Kong students to study communism that the entire Shanghai foreign press was in hiding that morning for fear of coming into contact with him. The attitude of the Rotary Club was but typical. The only thing, however, that will go down to posterity about the Shanghai Rotary Club is that on the day preceding Shaw's arrival, these Rotarians, or by Shaw's definition, these people who "keep in the rut," called Shaw "Blighter," "Ignoramous," "Fa Tz" and "Baka-yaro."