China and the West

Letter from Alice Chipman Dewey to Lucy Dewey
Oct. 31 [1920]
Dear Lucy, This is Sunday evening and we have just come in from a picnic on the mountain called YoloShan. We saw an anceatral worship, so one more experience has been added to Cinese ones. The place is lovely, trees large and old and not all of them crooked. Live oak and sweet gum and ginko camphor and chestnut, and good roads which are too goo to please the old residents who prefer the like the primitive, The temples are in charming spots, It is all little tho compared to the Ssishan and easy to reach, tho they insist I should keep in a chair. Papa had to stop at a school on the way down and make a speech so I am the only one back with Dr Yen himself, Mrs Yen and the two children staid for the ancestral worship as they are friends of that family. A monument, a beautiful new house with every thing comfortable for the worshippers, the flags and other marks of honor, the son greeting the friends who came, the open house and the tea and the sons wife the table set out with a fea[st] over which the flies were crawling, it all did not seem so bad a way to remember the dead as one might think. There wa[s] incense burning in place of the flowers on the grave Then we came down a lovely green and moist road like h[o]me with a little brook singing alongside and here am I taking the first whack at the machin to tell you about Changsha. There is much to tell, it has been what the books call an eventful week, small event filling up every minute, I spose Pap told you they handed us a program with a banqu[et] every night when we arrived, We have had the lovliest place to stay in all China missionary spots, Dr Yen is the most spirituel of Chinese and Mrs Is good as gold and simple and all that she ought to be, She comes from Shanghai. There are four lovely children It seems to me the Yale Mission intends to dominate all situations, and it is the Chinese members who keep their hands on top, We havent had a breathing spell once, not a moment when we could run away and buy things, Tho I have gathered up a few, Tomorrow morning I am going to th[e] Y.W.C.A. who live in part of a big house, f[am]ily named Tso who are selling off old things, and maybe I shall find something for you, We are bringing a leopard skin and some cross stitch. I wish I had kept a record from day to day to send you, You know by this time Mr Russell did not stay long but went on to peking last Tuesday, We leave t[o]morrow night and I think we have staid quite long enough. They are keeping up too strenuous a pace to last out for long. last night we went to a dull banquet given by eight societies. Tonight the Gentry are giving us one, I shall not go unless Pap gets back here for I think I am the only woman and Dr Yen does no[t] want me to go, In spite of his being so kind he has Chinese ideas about women.
The talk here is strong and loud about the Russells, Still I asked them to go and call on you. My advice is to receive the[m] well and not speak of the event, In fact it i[s] better for us all to do as little talking ab[o]ut it as possible. The day I first lectured in the missionary school they took back an engagement with Miss Black to speak and they told her the reason they co[u]ld not receive her, I will tell you all about it when we get back. The case is not easy All I wrote you from Hankow turned out to be quite an inc[illeg.] reac reading of Chinese methods and I have decided to never agin make an exception to my habit of saying I dont know what they are doing nor how they do it. [T]hings have gone smoothly here and very hapily owing to this charming home where we are staying, The whole thing is better planned and goes off with more snap than in most places The interpreters have been not very good, tho Papa has been settled down to an excellent one now. The Governor has been very civil, he is quite a simple human being, he brought us down the river in his launch when he came back from ns worship of the old hero whose grave we visited. He is going to start at once a model school on the basis of Pas suggestion that there are only two in China, He has aksed a Miss Loyan to take charge of it, She has been studying school administration in T.C. for three years besids studying somewhere else three years before that and she came back last September. She seems very stupid, and she certainly does not understand our language very well but we will hope that is not so. If one school is started as a result of these trips there is something to show, There is n[o] doubt this Gov is very much interested in education, It is said here he is rather weak in wishing to offend no one. but do not quote to any one any thing except the agreeable things I say He gave us together with other visitors a dinnes on Wednesday night.
Tomorrow night we leave on the boat at ten oclock. We go to lunch and to dinner and we each have to speak twice and I am going to look at the things at the Y.W.C.A. We are expect to stay in Wuchang and Hankow eack two days, So we ought to leave Hankow for the north on Saturday the 7th of Nov, Pa will go straight home but I shall stop off at Paotingfu I will let Miss Gumbrell know as you suggest in your letter which I was surely gald to get All you say soulds as if you were enjoying life Miss Stearns lives here she will get me the broadcloth and besides I am buying velvateen for you two dresses.
[Alice Chipman Dewey]