China and the West

Dreiser, Theodore. Works. (1901-1925).
1899
Dreiser, Theodore. Edmund Clarence Stedman at home. (New York, N.Y. : Frank A. Munsey, 1899). (Munsey's magazine).
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/010561293.
Spain had already made his [Emilio Aguinaldo] acquaintance, and had recently paid him a very large bribe to induce him to give up the sedition business and retire to China…
When he was introduced to her as 'Richard Watts' he took his china pipe from his mouth and lifted the brim of a vast sombrero hat suck careslessly upon the very back of his curly black hair…
A tour of the house is a passing in review of trophies won at sales, bits picked up in foreign travel, a purchase now and then of some choice collection, either of glass or china, or of prints and etchings…

1901
Dreiser, Theodore. Sister Carrie. (London : Heinemann, 1901). (The dollar library of American fiction).
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/233/233-h/233-h.htm.
Chap. V
He only craved the best, as his mind conceived it, and such doings seemed to him a part of the best. Rector's, with its polished marble walls and floor, its profusion of lights, its show of china and silverware, and, above all, its reputation as a resort for actors and professional men, seemed to him the proper place for a successful man to go…
Chap. XI
"Yes, indeed," added Drouet, who was not in the least aware that a battle had been fought and his defences weakened. He was like the Emperor of China, who sat glorying in himself, unaware that his fairest provinces were being wrested from him….
Chap. XXII
In the hall he found an evening paper, laid there by the maid and forgotten by Mrs. Hurstwood. In the dining-room the table was clean laid with linen and napery and shiny with glasses and decorated china…
Chap. XXXII
The tables were not so remarkable in themselves, and yet the imprint of Sherry upon the napery, the name of Tiffany upon the silverware, the name of Haviland upon the china, and over all the glow of the small, red-shaded candelabra and the reflected tints of the walls on garments and faces, made them seem remarkable…

1911
Dreiser, Theodore. Jennie Gerhardt : a novel. (New York, N.Y. : Harper & Brothers, 1911).
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300701.txt.
He wanted dinner served nicely at seven. Silverware, cut glass, imported china--all the little luxuries of life appealed to him. He kept his trunks and wardrobe at the apartment…
Food, china, her dress, anything was apt to be brought back to its chemical constituents, and he would leave her to struggle with these dark suggestions of something else back of the superficial appearance of things until she was actually in awe of him…

1914
Dreiser, Theodore. The titan. (New York, N.Y. : John Lane, 1914).
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3629/3629.txt.
He was somewhere in the East--in China, she heard—his infatuation for her apparently dead…

1914
Dreiser, Theodore. A traveler at forty. (New York, N.Y. : The Century co., 1914).
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000813692.
The tables were covered with white linen and simple, pretty china and a silver tea-service…
The china and plate were simple and inexpensive, almost poor…
A pink, slim lily of a woman, say twenty-eight or thirty, very fragile-seeming, very Dresden-chine-lik as to color…
America is going to flower next and grandly, and perhapts after that Africa, or Australia. Then, say, South America, and we come back to Europe by way of India, China, Japan and through Russia…
Sir Robert Hart, the late great English financial administrator of China, who, recently deceased, had been brought over sea to this simple churchyard, to lie here with other mambers of his family in what I assumed to be the neighborhood of his youth and nativity…
Imagine the English diing-room, the English maid, the housekeeper in watchful attendance on the children, the maid, like a bit of Dresden china…

1915
Dreiser, Theodore. The 'Genius'. (New York, N.Y. : John Lane, 1915).
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31824/31824.txt.
All the things which catered to showy material living were beginning to flourish tremendously, art and curio shops, rug shops, decorative companies dealing with the old and the new in hangings, furniture, objects of art; dealers in paintings, jewelry stores, china and glassware
houses…
The old furniture, the rugs, the hangings, the pictures, Eugene's borrowed maid servant in a white apron and cap, Angela, Marietta, the bright table set with colored china and an arrangement of silver candlesticks…
There were evenings when he sat on some one of the great verandas and watched them trim and string the interspaces between the columns with soft, glowing, Chinese lanterns, preparatory to the evening's dancing…
A piano was purchased outright and dinner and breakfast sets of Haviland china…
A car was called, and they sped to the club to find it dimly lighted with Chinese lanterns, and an orchestra playing softly in the gloom…

1916
Dreiser, Theodore. A Hoosier holiday. (New York, N.Y. : John Lane, 1916).
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011206139.
'I suppose', he commented, 'in these small middle West towns it is 'declassé' to be Japanese. They don't discriminate much between Japanese and Chinese. To suggest anything like that probably hurts her feelings dreadfully.

1919
Dreiser, Theodore. Twelve Men. (New York, N.Y. : Boni and Liveright, 1919).
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14717/14717-h/14717-h.htm.
Among other things at this time, the latter was, or pretended to be, immensely interested in all things pertaining to the Chinese and to know not only something of their language, which he had studied a little somewhere, but also their history—a vague matter, as we all know—and the spirit and significance of their art and customs. He sometimes condescended to take us about with him to one or two Chinese restaurants of the most beggarly description, and—as he wished to believe, because of the romantic titillation involved—the hang-outs of crooks and thieves and disreputable Tenderloin characters generally. (Of such was the beginning of the Chinese restaurant in America.) He would introduce us to a few of his Celestial friends, whose acquaintance apparently he had been most assiduously cultivating for some time past and with whom he was now on the best of terms. He had, as Peter pointed out to me, the happy knack of persuading himself that there was something vastly mysterious and superior about the whole Chinese race, that there was some Chinese organization known as the Six Companions, which, so far as I could make out from him, was ruling very nearly (and secretly, of course) the entire habitable globe. For one thing it had some governing connection with great constructive ventures of one kind and another in all parts of the world, supplying, as he said, thousands of Chinese laborers to any one who desired them, anywhere, and although they were employed by others, ruling them with a rod of iron, cutting their throats when they failed to perform their bounden duties and burying them head down in a basket of rice, then transferring their remains quietly to China in coffins made in China and brought for that purpose to the country in which they were. The Chinese who had worked for the builders of the Union Pacific had been supplied by this company, as I understood from Dick. In regard to all this Peter used to analyze and dispose of Dick's self-generated romance with the greatest gusto, laughing the while and yet pretending to accept it all.
But there was one phase of all this which interested Peter immensely. Were there on sale in St. Louis any bits of jade, silks, needlework, porcelains, basketry or figurines of true Chinese origin? He was far more interested in this than in the social and economic sides of the lives of the Chinese, and was constantly urging Dick to take him here, there and everywhere in order that he might see for himself what of these amazing wonders were locally extant, leading Dick in the process a merry chase and a dog's life. Dick was compelled to persuade nearly all of his boasted friends to produce all they had to show. Once, I recall, a collection of rare Chinese porcelains being shown at the local museum of art, there was nothing for it but that Dick must get one or more of his Oriental friends to interpret this, that and the other symbol in connection with this, that and the other vase—things which put him to no end of trouble and which led to nothing, for among all the local Chinese there was not one who knew anything about it, although they, Dick included, were not honest enough to admit it.
"You know, Dreiser," Peter said to me one day with the most delicious gleam of semi-malicious, semi-tender humor, "I am really doing all this just to torture Dick. He doesn't know a damned thing about it and neither do these Chinese, but it's fun to haul 'em out there and make 'em sweat. The museum sells an illustrated monograph covering all this, you know, with pictures of the genuinely historic pieces and explanations of the various symbols in so far as they are known, but Dick doesn't know that, and he's lying awake nights trying to find out what they're all about. I like to see his expression and that of those chinks when they examine those things." He subsided with a low chuckle all the more disturbing because it was so obviously the product of well-grounded knowledge…
All along in writing this I feel as though I were giving but the thinnest portrait of Peter; he was so full and varied in his moods and interests. To me he illustrated the joy that exists, on the one hand, in the common, the so-called homely and what some might think ugly side of life, certainly the very simple and ordinarily human aspect of things; on the other, in the sheer comfort and satisfaction that might be taken in things truly intellectual and artistic, but to which no great expense attached—old books, prints, things connected with history and science in their various forms, skill in matters relating to the applied arts and what not, such as the coloring and firing of pottery and glass, the making of baskets, hammocks and rugs, the carving of wood, the collection and imitation of Japanese and Chinese prints, the art of embalming as applied by the Egyptians (which, in connection with an undertaker to whom he had attached himself, he attempted to revive or at least play with, testing his skill for instance by embalming a dead cat or two after the Egyptian manner). In all of these lines he trained himself after a fashion and worked with skill, although invariably he insisted that he was little more than a bungler, a poor follower after the art of some one else. But most of all, at this time and later, he was interested in collecting things Japanese and Chinese: netsukes, inros, censors, images of jade and porcelain, teajars, vases, prints; and it was while he was in Philadelphia and seemingly trifling about with the group I have mentioned and making love to his little German girl that he was running here and there to this museum and that and laying the foundations of some of those interesting collections which later he was fond of showing his friends or interested collectors…
He found a Chinese quarter with a restaurant or two; an amazing Italian section with a restaurant; a man who had a $40,000 collection of rare Japanese and Chinese curios, all in his rooms at the Essex County Insane Asylum, for he was the chemist there; a man who was a playwright and manager in New York; another who owned a newspaper syndicate; another who directed a singing society; another who was president of a gun club; another who owned and made or rather fired pottery for others. Peter was so restless and vital that he was always branching out in a new direction. To my astonishment he now took up the making and firing of pottery for himself, being interested in reproducing various Chinese dishes and vases of great beauty, the originals of which were in the Metropolitan Museum of Art…
One day he was over in New York visiting one of his favorite Chinese importing companies, through which he had secured and was still securing occasional objects of art…
His boy, the petted F——, could not even recall his father, the girl not at all of course. And in the place were a few of his prints, two or three Chinese dishes, pottered by himself, his loom with the unfinished rug…

1920
Dreiser, Theodore. Hey rub-a-dub-dub : a book of the mystery and wonder and terror of life. (New York, N.Y. : Boni and Liveright, 1920).
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/002239309.
Again, all of the West Indies, so it was argued, now controlled by European power, should have been exacted or made independent under our protection so as not to fall into the hands of our enemies in the future. Should not, asked some, a halt have been called to European aggression in China, the open door insisted upon ?...
We could not live in peace with autocracy – although, forsooth, we could live in peace with the Japanese, the Chinese, the Imperial Russian Government before it fell, England in India, England in Egypt – anything and everything, indeed, save with a nation that did not fight as we did…
Your American of Anglo-Saxon or other origin is actually no better, spiritually or morally, than any other creature of this earth, be he Turk or Hindu or Chinese, except from a materially constructive or wealth-breeding point of view, but for some odd reason he thinks he is…

1922
Dreiser, Theodore. A book about myself. (New York, N.Y. : Boni and Liveright, 1922).
https://archive.org/stream/abookaboutmysel02dreigoog/abookaboutmysel02dreigoog_djvu.txt.
From now on I noticed that my noble Wood, whom I had so much looked up to at first, began to take me about with him to one or more Chinese restaurants of the most beggarly description in the environs of the downtown section, which same he had discovered and with
the proprietors of which he was on the best of terms. They were really hang-outs for crooks and thieves and disreputable tenderloin characters generally (such was the beginning of the Chinese restaurant in America), but not so to Wood. He had the happy faculty of persuading himself that there was something vastly mysterious and superior about the entire Chinese race, and after introducing me to many of his new laundry friends he proceeded to assure me of the existence of some huge Chinese organization known as the Six Companies which, so far as I could make out from hearing him talk, was slowly but surely (and secretly, of course) getting
control of the entire habitable globe. It had complete control of great financial and constructive ventures here, there and everywhere, and supplied on order thousands of Chinese
laborers to any one who desired them, anywhere. And this organization ruled them with a rod of iron, cutting their throats and burying them head down in a bucket of rice when they failed to perform their bounden duties and transferring their remains quietly to China in coffins made in China and brought here for that purpose. The Chinese who had worked for the builders of the Union Pacific had been supplied by this company, so he said. Again, there were the Chinese Free Masons, a society so old and so powerful and so mysterious that one might speak of it only in whispers for fear of getting into trouble. This indeed was the great organization of the world, in China and everywhere else. Kings and potentates knew of it and trembled before its power. If it wished it could sweep the Chinese Emperor and all European monarchs off their thrones tomorrow. There were rites, mysteries, sanctuaries within sanctuaries in this great organization. He himself was as yet a mere outsider, snooping about but by degrees, slowly and surely, as I was given to understand, was worming its secrets out of these Chinese restaurant-keepers and laundrymen, its deepest mysteries, whereby he hoped to profit in this way: he was going to study Chinese, then go to China. There he would get into this marvelous organization through the influence of some of his Chinese friends here. Then he was going to get next to some of the o£Scials of the Chinese Government, and being thus highly recommended and thought of would come back here eventually as an official Chinese interpreter, attached perhaps to the Chinese Legation at Washington. How he was to profit so vastly by this I could not see, but he seemed to think that he would…
According to Wood, who early made friends with him quite as he did with the Chinese and
others for purposes of study, he was identified with some houses of prostitution in which he had a small financial interest, as well as various political schemes then being locally fostered by one and another group of low politicians who were constantly getting up one scheme and another to mulct the city in some underhanded way…
Balzac's heroes had seemed to do so, why not It It is written of the Dragon Otod of China that in the beginning it swallowed the world….
David Graham Phillips, James Creelman, then a correspondent for the paper in the war which had broken out between China and Japan, to say nothing of (George Gary Eggleston and Reginald de Eoven, the latter on the staff as chief musical critic…

1925
Dreiser, Theodor. An American tragedy. (New York, N.Y. : Boni and Liveright, 1925).
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/nonus?id=olbp16127.
They had now turned two corners, crossed two different streets and, in group formation, were making their way through the main door of Frissell's, which gave in on the reflection of lights upon china and silverware and faces, and the buzz and clatter of a dinner crowd…
Clyde had either read about or saw at a distance—a graduation reception and dance at the Snedeker School, a lawn fete upon the Griffiths' grounds, with a striped marquee tent on one
part of the lawn and Chinese lanterns hung in among the trees…
But worse--there, in that cell directly opposite him, a sallow and emaciated and sinister-looking Chinaman in a suit exactly like his own, who had come to the bars of his door and was looking at him out of inscrutable slant eyes, but as immediately turning and scratching himself--vermin, maybe, as Clyde immediately feared. There had been bedbugs at Bridgeburg.
A Chinese murderer… But Clyde, too horrified and sickened for words, was sadly gazing at the walls and door, then over at the Chinaman, who, silent at his door, was once more gazing at him… And that sallow, rickety Chinaman over the way taking his. Whom had he murdered?...
Instead, at ten o'clock and in order to quiet all those who were left, a cold lunch was brought in and offered—but with none eating save the Chinaman over the way…
And with Clyde where he was, more and more executions--although as he found--and to his invariable horror, no one ever became used to such things there; farmhand Mowrer for the slaying of his former employer; officer Riordan for the slaying of his wife--and a fine upstanding officer too but a minute before his death; and afterwards, within the month, the going of the Chinaman, who seemed, for some reason, to endure a long time…
He got up and walked to his cell door to still a great pain. Over the way, in that cell the Chinaman had once occupied, was a Negro-- Wash Higgins…

1925
Dreiser, Theodore. The financier. (New York, N.Y. : Boni and Liveright, 1925).
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1840/1840.txt.
The china was good--of a delicate pattern. The carpets and wall-paper were too high in key…
He cared more for his curio-cases filled with smaller imported bronzes, Venetian glass, and Chinese jade…
A third bailiff guarded the door of the jury-room; and in addition to these there were present a court clerk--small, pale, candle-waxy, with colorless milk-and-water eyes, and thin, pork-fat-colored hair and beard, who looked for all the world like an Americanized and decidedly decrepit Chinese mandarin--and a court stenographer…
To him went the curio case of Venetian glass; one pair of tall blue-and-white Mohammedan
cylindrical vases; fourteen examples of Chinese jade, including several artists' water-dishes and a pierced window-screen of the faintest tinge of green…