China and the West

Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan.
Peking, July 17. [17.7.1919].
We are pleased to learn that the Japanese censor hasn't detained all our letters, though since you call them incoherent there must be some gaps. I'm sure we never write anything incoherent if you get it all. The course of events has been a trifle incoherent if you don't sit up and hold its hands all the time. Since China didn't sign the peace treaty things have quite settled down here, however, and the lack of excitement after living on aerated news for a couple of months is quite a letdown. However, we live in hopes of revolution or a coup d’état or some other little incident to liven up the dog days.
You will be pleased to know that the University Chancellor—see letters of early May—has finally announced that he will return to the University. It is supposed that the Government has assented to his conditions, among which is that the police won't interfere with the students, but will leave discipline to the University authorities. To resign and run away in order to be coaxed back is an art. It's too bad Wilson never studied it. The Chinese peace delegates reported back here that Lloyd George inquired what the twenty-one Demands were, as he had never heard of them. However, the Chinese hold Balfour as most responsible. In order to avoid any incoherence I will add that a Chinese servant informed a small boy in the household of one of our friends here that the Chinese are much more cleanly than the foreigners, for they have people come to them to clean their ears and said cleaners go way down in. This is an unanswerable argument.
I hear your mother downstairs engaged on the fascinating task of trying to make Chinese tones. I may tell you that there are only four hundred spoken words in Chinese, all monosyllables. But each one of these is spoken in a different tone, there being four tones in this part of the country and increasing as you go south till in Canton there are twelve or more. In writing there are only 214 radicals, which are then combined and mixed up in all sorts of ways. My last name here is Du, my given name is Wei. The Du is made up of two characters, one of which means tree and the other earth. They are written separately. Then Wei is made up of some more characters mixed up together, one character for woman and one for dart, and I don't know what else. Don’t ask me how they decided that earth and tree put together made Du, for I can't tell.