China and the West

Norris, Frank. The octopus : a story of California. (New York, N.Y. : Doubleday, Page & Co., 1901).
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=268.
Soon after this Genslinger took himself away, and Derrick's Chinaman came in to set the table…
The Chinaman had made a certain kind of plum pudding for dessert, and Annixter, who remembered other dinners at the Derrick's, had been saving himself for this, and had meditated upon it all through the meal…
Before he could interfere, the Chinaman had poured a quantity of it upon his plate…
A little while after this the Chinaman cleared away the dessert and brought in coffee and cigars…
The half hundred men of the gang threw themselves upon the supper the Chinese cooks had set out in the shed of the eating-house, long as a bowling alley, unpainted, crude, the seats benches, the table covered with oil cloth. Overhead a half-dozen kerosene lamps flared and smoked…
In answer to Annixter's embarrassed inquiry after Magnus, she sent the Chinese cook to call him from the office; and Annixter, after tying his horse to the ring driven into the trunk of one
of the eucalyptus trees, came up to the porch, and, taking off his hat, sat down upon the steps…
A Chinaman went by, teetering under the weight of his market baskets slung on a pole across
his shoulders…
As Annixter came to the door of the barn to shout abuse at the distraught Chinese cook who was cutting up lemons in the kitchen, he caught sight of Presley and Vanamee and hailed them…
He shouted a last imprecation at the Chinaman and turned back into the barn…
Mamma and papa, of course, and Billy, the stableman, and Montalegre, the Portugee foreman, and the Chinese cook, even, and Mr. Delaney…
We must march with the course of empire, not against it. I mean, we must look to China. Rice in China is losing its nutritive quality. The Asiatics, though, must be fed; if not on rice, then on wheat. Why, Mr. Derrick, if only one-half the population of China ate a half ounce of flour per man per day all the wheat areas in California could not feed them. Ah, if I could only hammer that into the brains of every rancher of the San Joaquin, yes, and of every owner of every bonanza farm in Dakota and Minnesota. Send your wheat to China; handle it yourselves;
do away with the middleman; break up the Chicago wheat pits and elevator rings and mixing houses. When in feeding China you have decreased the European shipments, the effect is instantaneous. Prices go up in Europe without having the least effect upon the prices in China. We hold the key, we have the wheat,--infinitely more than we ourselves can eat. Asia and Europe must look to America to be fed. What fatuous neglect of opportunity to continue to deluge Europe with our surplus food when the East trembles upon the verge of starvation!"…
The Chinaman, in the robes of a mandarin, lectured on Confucius…
"Harran," said the Governor, with decision, "there is a deal, there, in what Cedarquist says. Our wheat to China, hey, boy?"…
He saw the farmer suddenly emancipated, the world's food no longer at the mercy of the speculator, thousands upon thousands of men set free of the grip of Trust and ring and monopoly acting for themselves, selling their own wheat, organizing into one gigantic trust, themselves, sending their agents to all the entry ports of China…
The Chinese cook served his supper in silence…
They made the inevitable bridal trip to the Cliff House and spent an afternoon in the grewsome and made-to-order beauties of Sutro's Gardens; they went through Chinatown, the Palace Hotel, the park museum…
He found her in the dining-room, her hands full of the gold-bordered china plates, only used on special occasions and which Louisa was forbidden to touch…
Annixter, observant enough where his wife was concerned noted how the reflection of the white china set a glow of pale light underneath her chin…
Presley looked at the marvellous, department-store bed of brass, with its brave, gay canopy; the mill-made wash-stand, with its pitcher and bowl of blinding red and green china, the straw-framed lithographs of symbolic female figures against the multi-coloured…
"Say, how about those paintings, Pres?" inquired Annixter a little uneasily. "I don't know whether they're good or not.They were painted by a three-fingered Chinaman in Monterey, and I got the lot for thirty dollars, frames thrown in….
Hilma hastened to put forward a huge china platter…
She turned aside in avoidance of this, only to plunge into the purlieus of Chinatown…
The entire table was a vague glow of white napery, delicate china, and glass as brilliant as crystal…