China and the West

Letter from G. Lowes Dickinson to Edward Morgan Forster. Peking, 8 June 1913.
Dear Forster,
China is a land of human beings. India, as it glimmers in a remote past, is supernatural, uncanny, terrifying, sublime, horrible, monotonous, full of mountains and abysses, all heights and depths, and for ever incomprehensible. But China ! So gay, friendly, beautiful, sane, hellenic, choice, human. Dirty ? Yes. Peking, the last day or two, is all but impossible even in a rickshaw – pools, lakes, of liquid mud. One understands the importance of the sedan chair, and the wall side, 150 years ago in Europe. Poor ? Yes. But never were poor people so happy (I speak with all the superficiality you care to credit me with). A Chinese home in Peking is beyond description exquisite : its courtyard, with trees and flowering shrubs, its little rooms and hall, paper-windowed, perfect in proposition and design, its gaily painted wooden cloisers. And you approach them by a slum. A level, rational people – a kind of English with sensitiveness and imagination. An immense background, I admit, of ghosts and devils – just to add spice to life – one prays to them, when things go a bit wrong ; otherwise one laughs at them. No reaches into the infinite ; but a clear, non-restricted perception of the beautiful and the exquisite in the Real. But the hand of the Powers, or rather the foot, is on her throat, I don't know whether she can pull through, Said one of them to me : 'Get up, you brute ! 'I'll get up', says China, 'when you take away your foot !' 'No ! You get up, and I'll take away my foot !' The same gentleman remarked : 'British rule in India is excellent – at water closets'. This, of course, is technically incorrect. He was mad, but a madman of genius. He called at 3, and talked till 7.30, when I had to dismiss him – remarking, at intervals, 'But I came to hear you talk' – whereupon he was swept away even more on the flood. Yes, China is much as I imagined it. I thought I was idealizing, but I now doubt it. Of Course, Lama priests are sturdy beggars and Buddhist priests aren't much better. Then the country ! Round Peking, it's Italy. You go out to the hills, and wander from monastery to monastery, each more exquisitely placed than the last. Happy people who have travelled in the interior tell even more wonderful tales. Hunan, Rose tells me, is a land of beautiful mountains, fields of flowers, and farmers tilling their own land who are also scholars and gentlemen. He told one of them about intensive methods of cultivating rice. And when they parted the Chinaman said : 'You, a stranger, have come to us and honoured and delighted us with your talk. I shall consecrate to you a corner of my farm, and try the experiment you suggest'. Then they are the only democratic people – in their manners as well as their institutions – perfectly self-respecting, perfectly courteous and friendly, and altogether declining to be hustled into doing anything they think unreasonable. If such a people could be lifted onto a higher economic level, without losing these qualities, we should have the best society this planet admits of. Whereas I believe everything in India will have to be, and ought to be, swept away – except their beautiful dress and their beautiful brown bodies – there they do score off the ugly but fascinating Chinese. But their caste ! And their whole quality of mind. No, it's all wrong. C'est magnifique – mais ce n'est pas la vie, any more than the Middle Ages were. I'm rather surprised at all this that has tumbled out of my pen. I suppose the 'Subconscious' has been working it up, unbeknown to me. Take it for what it's worth, and not too solemnly. It has truth in it – a little scintilla of that dry flint. Well, you did well in India. Does it seem like a dream, now you're home ? I must get on to Japan before long, but plans are difficult to make. If you write, best address at 11 Edwardes Square. Shall you write a book on India ? I shall write a book of essays called 'East and West', gracefully alluding, in a remote way, to facts.