China and the West

[Mansfield, Katherine]. Yuan hui. Tang Yuncong yi [ID D30055].
Commentary by Tang Yuncong : "In creative writing Mansfield firmly believed in writing about life as it is. She was very strict with herself and never satisfied with her own work, always criticizing herself for failing to merge her whole self into her work. Her subject-matter is primarily limited to bourgeois family life. Lacking in experience, she never managed to engage in writing about the new social force – the industrial proletariat. She is nevertheless keenly observant of the human relationships in bourgeois societies, able to expose them deeply… Mansfield loved Russian literature deeply, and was influenced by Chekhov in particular. She has a style unique to herself, and her innovations to the short story have had a far-reaching influence. Her language is smooth, crystal clear and delightful. She is greatly skilled in subtle implications, seldom making herself explicit. Her work is often difficult to understand, but profound and rich with meaning…"

[Melville, Herman]. Bei jing : Mobi Dike. Cao Yong yi. [ID D30233].
The postscript dwells on Cao's experience of translating Moby Dick and offers his critical analysis of the novel in terms of its plot and theme.
Cao Yong's preface to his revised edition in 1982 is a personal reading of Moby Dick explaining why Cao had to improve his translation.

Moore, Marianne. Tedium and integrity. Typescript Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia. [Lecture about Tao of painting by Mai-mai sze].
. . . This whole theme—the thought of integrity—was suggested to me by THE TAO OF PAINTING, with a translation of THE MUS¬TARD SEED GARDEN MANUAL OF PAINTING 1679-1701, by Miss Mme Mme [Mai-mai] Sze; published by the Bollingen Foundation, 1956. Hsieh Ho [Xie He] whose Six Canons of Painting were formulated about a.d. 500 said, "The terms ancient and modern have no meaning in art." I indeed felt that art is timeless when I saw in the Book Review section of The New York Times last spring, the reproduction of a plum branch by Tsou [Zou] Fu-lei, XIV century—a blossoming branch entitled A Breath of Spring. (Sometimes, I am tempted to add, when one breaks open a plum, one gets a fragrance of the blossom).
Tao means way or path. There is a Tao and there is The Tao, as Miss Mme Mme [Mai-mai] Sze explains. In Chinese writing, which is pictographic as you know, The Tao is portrayed as a foot taking a step (ch'o [zu]) and a head (shou). So we have the idea of wholeness of total harmony from head to foot. Step by step progress requires deliberateness, suggesting that meditation is basic to living, to all that we do, and that conduct is a thing of inner motivation. Pictographically, man is but a pair of legs, whereas the Tao is an integration of body, legs, arms, and above all a head. China’s concept of The Tao as the center of the circle, the creative principle, the golden mean, is one of the oldest in Chinese thought, shared by all schools. The Tao is the mark. The soul is the arrow. Indeed Lieh Tzu [Liezi] said, "To the mind that is still the whole universe surrenders."
It is not known in what period the idea of Yin and Yang originated, but as early as the XI century [b.c.] they were mentioned as the two primal forces. The Yang, the Male Principle — symbolized by the right foot—was identified with sun, light, action, positiveness; and Yin, the Female Principle, with the moon, darkness and quiescence.
There are two important features of Chinese painting.
1. The close relationship between painting and calligraphy. Writing Chinese characters developed a fine sense of proportion—prominent in every aspect of Chinese life. Confucius regarded a sense of fitness as one of the Five Cardinal Virtues.
2. The view that painting is not a profession but an extension of the art of living. Usually therefore, painting was an expression of maturity. A painter was likely to be an astronomer, a musician, perhaps a medical man. In acquiring the education prescribed by the Tao of Painting, a painter underwent rigorous intellectual discipline which included in-tensive training of memory. So authorship in China is integral to education, please note—not a separate proficiency to be acquired. (Rather humbling to those of us who devoted much time [to] incidental aspects of writing.) Chinese philosophy, Mme Mme [Mai-mai] Sze observes, might be said to be psychology—a development of the whole personality; and egotism—or what the Bhuddist [Buddhist] called ignorance—obscures a clear vision of the Tao. It is unusual, at least in my experience, to come on a book of verse which has not a tincture of sarcasm or grievance, a sense of injury personal or general, and I feel very strongly what Juan Ramon Jiménez said in referring to something else—to what is not poetry—"there is a profounder profundity" than obsession with self.
Painting should be a fusion of that which pertains to Heaven— the spirit — and of matter, which pertains to Earth, as effected by the painter's insight and skill. The search for a rational explanation of nature and the universe encourage a tendency to classification—almost a disease as noted by Miss Mme Mme [Mai-mai] Sze, when carried to an extreme; and in China Six Canons of Painting were formulated, as has been said, about a.d. 500 by Hsieh Ho [Xie He], Of these the first — basic to all—controlled the other five and applies to all kinds of painting was spirit. The word ch'i [qi]—in the Cantonese version pronounced hay, is almost hke exhaling a breath, cognate in meaning to pneuma and the word spiritus.
2.The Second Canon says "The brush is the means of creating structure." The ideal takes form. The spiritual aspect has tangible expression, and while one result of the tendency by Sung [Song] academicians to stress faithful representation, was to hamper spontaneity, a happy result was the superb paintings of insects, flowers, animals, and birds. In Volume II of the Manual where methods are illustrated, we have bud and buds beginning to open, thick leaves that withstand winter, plants with thorns and furry leaves, grasshoppers, large grasshoppers, crickets, beetles and the praying mantis; small birds fighting while [flying], a bird bathing and a bird shaking off water.
3. According to the object draw its form.
4. According to the nature of the object apply color.
5. "Organize the composition with each element in its rightful place." One is reminded here of Hsieh Ho's [Xie He] statement: "Accidents impair and time transforms but it is we who choose." In Volume II, in which methods are illustrated, one has "tiled structures at several levels, at a distance," (nests of very beautiful drawings), walls, bridges, temples, a lean-to of beanstalks. "If a man had eyes all over his body," the Manual says, "his body would be a monstrosity. ... A landscape with people and dwellings in it has life, but too many figures and houses give the effect of a market-place." Perhaps the most important factor in harmonizing the elements of a picture is space, Miss Mme Mme [Mai-mai] Sze feels: "the most original contribution of Chinese painting, the most exhilarating." "Space of any kind was regarded as filled with meaning—in fact was synonymous with the Tao. A hollow tree was not empty but filled with spirit. The spaces between the spokes of a wheel make the wheel, and inner space, not the pottery of the pitcher, is its essential part," it is not a set of walls but "the space in a room that is its usefulness." One of the Twelve Faults was "a crowded ill-arranged composition"; or "water with no indication of its source."
6. In copying, transmit the essence of the master's brush and methods. Chinese thinking abounds in symbolism and the circle as a concept of wholeness is surely one of great fascination. Everything must be in proper relation to the center. A circle's beginning (its head), and end (or foot) are the same, unmoving and continually moving and still life — nature morte—is contrary to the whole concept of Chinese painting. The Tao (a path) lies on the ground, is still, yet leans somewhere and so has movement; and we have, therefore, an identity of contraries which are not in conflict but complementary opposites or two halves of a whole, as in the Yin and Yang—symbolized by the disc divided by an S-like curve. It is not known in what period the idea of Yin and Yang originated, but as early as the XI century [b.c.] they were mentioned as the primal forces. The Yang, the Male Principle identified pictographically with the right foot—was identified as well, with sun, light, action, positiveness; and Yin, the Female Principle, with the moon, darkness, and quiescence.
The Chinese dragon is a symbol of the power of Heaven, a main characteristic being constant movement — slumbering in the deep or winging across the Heaven. At will it could change and be the size of a silkworm or swell so large as to fill the space of Heaven and Earth, and so represents totality. It had also the gift of invisibility. A second type of symbol pertains to flowers, birds, and animals —the phoenix, the tortoise, the unicorn, the crane, the pine, the peach, being motifs for long life, and the bamboo, a symbol of elegance.
So complete is the Manual that the brush, the ink, inkstone, and paper (or silk) — the Four Treasures — are minutely discussed. In making the brush into one end of the hollow bamboo holder, a tuft of hair or fur is inserted and fixed with a little glue. As for glues, the much- esteemed Tang-o [Dong'e] glue was made by boiling donkey-hides in Tang [Dong] River water, which contained special minerals. Other good glues were made from deer horns or fish skin. The jet blackness and sheen of a certain ink made from pine-soot, also depend on the preparation. "To dull the ink, pulverized oyster-shells or powdered jade were added although jade was put in principally as a gesture of respect to the ink." "Old ink sticks and cakes have a unique fragrance, often heightened by adding musk, camphor, or pomegranate-bark" "Old ink is treated like a vintage wine." "Not only can great variety of tone be produced from one stick, but several kinds are often used in one painting, since ink often blended with color, enriched the venerable air of trees and rocks," the Element of the mysterious, the dark and fertile dignity hovering over hillock and pool."
"The aim of the entire Manual is to develop the painter's spiritual resources." "There is an old saying": (quoted in this Preface to the Shanghai Edition (1887) of the Manual) "that those who are skilled in painting will live long because life created through the sweep of the brush can strengthen life itself, both being of the spirit—the ch'i [qi]."
"To achieve trueness and naturalness is to be in harmony with the Tao—the equival of an act of worship." "Natural spontaneous brush-work is like the flight of a bird." "The function of brush and ink is to make visible the invisible."

[Moore received her complimentary set of The Tao of painting by Mai-mai Sze from the Bollingen Foundation].
Letter from Marianne Moore to John Barrett ; January 22, 1957.
You cannot imagine my excitement in possessing these books. The exposition of subjects and the terminology in discussing 'The Elements of a Picture' in the Chinese text is pleasure enough for a lifetime. If I were in a decline mentally, the insect and frog color-print in Volume I of the Tao would, I think, help me to regain tone. The accuracy without rigidity of the characterizations is hard to credit ; the emerald of the leopard-frog and its watchful eye, the dragon-flies, sanguine, brown and greenish gray against the fragile beetle of some kind, the climbing katydid and grasshopper on the move, the plausibility of all this life above the pumpkin-leaves and lace of lesser leaves, the bumble-bee so solid despite frail violet wings and trailing legs with thorny rasps, are something, I suppose, that one could learn by heart but never become used to.

Letter from Marianne Moore to Hildegarde Watson ; January 25, 1957.
It was a very regal party given by Mrs. Clark Williams (no relative of WCW) – 150 Central Park South. She is a dear lady, very old with snow white hair, very strong, and a skilled hostess – in black velvet with two large salmon roses at the waist. Chinese bird and butterfly wall paper, china figurines ; 'rare' Martha Washington plates and tea-pots, jade dishes ; and pale Chinese brocade settees.

Letter from Ezra Pound to Marianne Moore ; March 9, 1957.
Pound noted an 'immensely important' book : Belden, Jack. China shakes the world. (New York, N.Y. : Monthly Review Press, 1970).

Wilder, Thornton. Preface to three plays : Our town, The skin of our teeth, The matchmaker. (1957). In : Wilder, Thornton. American characteristics and other essays. (New York, N.Y. : Harper & Row, 1979).
In Chinese drama a character, by straddling a stick, conveys to us that he is on horseback. In almost every No play of the Japanese an actor makes a tour of the stage and we know that he is making a long journey.

Goldstone, Richard H. The art of fiction XVI : Thornton Wilder. In : Writers at work : the Paris review interviews. Ed. by Malcolm Cowley. (New York, N.Y. : Viking Press, 1958).
Interviewer : Did the young Thornton Wilder resemble George Brush, and in what ways ?
Wilder : Very much so. I came from a very strict Calvinistic father, was brought up partly among the missionaries of China, and went to that splendid college at Oberlin at a time when the classrooms and student life carried a good deal of the pious didacticism which would now be called narrow Protestantism.

Renata Pisu hält sich in Beijing auf und besucht die Beijing-Universität.

Greene, Graham. A weed among the flowers [ID D32056].
I little knew the turbulent time which lay ahead of me when on the telephone my friend Margaret Lane invited me, subject to the consent of the Chinese authorities, to join a little party including herself and her husband for a month's visit to China in April 1957. It was during that deceptively hopeful season of the Hundred Flowers, and I accepted the idea with enthusiasm. When I visited the Chinese Embassy I gathered that all was in order.
At London airport I was a little disappointed when I found myself without my friends, who were apparently leaving some weeks later in another group. So here we were on the tarmac, four of us, all strangers to each other: myself, Lord Chorley, who was a distinguished socialist lawyer, a Mrs Smith, a Communist lady from Hampstead, and a Professor whose name I didn't at first catch. His subject, Comparative Education, was something then quite unknown to me, and I shall continue to call him the Professor since as it turned out I was to behave quite abominably to him. I was even to behave abominably to the innocent Lord Chorley, but Lord Chorley is dead and he will not be hurt by anything I may write.
The trouble didntt start at the first stage which brought us to Moscow where we changed planes, nor on the forty-eight hours one which followed, in those distant days before the jet, to Pekin, so perhaps the Mou-Tai which we learnt to appreciate after we arrived in China, may have contributed a little to the trouble I caused. We saw little of each other between planes in Moscow, and we were still a friendly party when we changed to a Chinese plane in Mongolia at Ulan Bator. It was a very rough descent to Pekin and I asked the air hostess why we didn't wear safety belts. "Oh," she said, "of course we had safety belts at first, but now our pilots are so reliable."
I think it may have been deeply rooted preference to travelling by myself which began the trouble. To misquote Kipling, "He travels better who travels alone." When we arrived at Pekin airport we were entertained at once with tea, sitting on the uncomfortable classical Chinese chairs, and we were asked where we wanted to go. Here was my opportunity, I thought, to be alone, so before anybody else could speak I said, "I want to go to your ancient capital Sian, then I want to go to Chungking, and then I want to take a boat down the Yangtse-kiang to Hangkow and then return to Pekin by train." There was a pause for someone else to speak, but then, to my dismay, my three companions agreed with my plan. We were doomed to be together. So what?
No trouble at first. We were told that we must wait for the second party before we visited all the right tourist attractions — and how marvellous they are —The Forbidden City, the Great Wall, the Ming Tombs — nothing in the West can compare with them. A few days had to pass before we flew to Sian and my companions got involved with serious visits to factories and educational establishments and scientific institutes, but I was able to excuse myself, as I had made friends with a gigantic trycycle driver who was ready to take me shopping in the back lanes of the old city. He was probably a police informer, but what did I care? I was innocent of any espionage intentions, I was happy to be alone, buying a case of inks here and an attractive padded jacket there for a friend at home. He even spoke a bit of English which made it even more probable that he was an informer, and I liked him the better for wasting his time with me. Perhaps my desire to be alone justified a certain suspicion.
We had now been allotted two guides, a young man and a girl (the girl I suppose to chaperone Mrs Smith). Both were kind, patient and charming. At some point in our travels we visited a collective farm and I questioned our male guide about contraception. "Of course," he told me, "it is encouraged and widely practised."
"In this village, for example, there would be a chemist shop?"
"Yes. Yes. In all places."
"Where a man can buy a sheath?"
"Yes, yes, of course."
"Would you mind going and buying one for me?"
He hesitated a long while before he found his reply. "That I cannot do. YJU see I do not know your size."
It was at Sian that I began my addiction to that dangerous drink, Mou-Tai, which has an alcoholic content of between fifty and sixty. I had been told by an expert that outside the great cities one should choose the dirtiest restaurants to eat in, and this proved to be true in Sian where the Mou-Tai was also of first class quality which perhaps explains gaps in my memory. I only half remember in Sian watching a Pekin opera modern style where girls sold refreshments during the performance like the orange girls in Stuart London, but they sold not oranges but pickled garlic.
Perhaps already I was feeling a certain irritation with the Professor who seemed to me, I am sure quite unjustly, to speak in paragraphs even when replying to a simple statement as, "It looks like being a good day."
"Yes," he would reply, "when I went to bed last night I noticed that there was a slight breeze coming from the west, and I believe . . ."
Anyway Mou-Tai, even without the Professor, would probably have been my downfall — I bought a small bottle to take with me on the very small plane in which we flew on to Chungking where the real troubles began. On the plane, as it descended, the Mou-Tai blew out its inadequate cork, and the fumes filled the cabin.
The airport is on the top of the hill which dominates Chungking. A group of our hosts were waiting for us with care to take us down into the city. We all smelt of Mou-Tai, but I was avariciously guarding what was left in the bottle, having made an even more inadequate cork with a spool of paper.
A young man ushered me into a taxi. He spoke excellent English and he began to tell me how timely our visit was, for a festival was being held in Chungking for that great English poet, Robert Burns, and the guest of honour was another great English poet who had written an ode to Lenin, Hugh Mac . . . Mac . . .
"Diarmid?" I suggested correctly.
"I am a little poet myself," he went on, "and I admire much the poetry of Robert . . ."
He broke abruptly off. I looked at him. The colour of his face was a strange shade of green. He gestured wildly with his hand. I realized that he was trying to indicate the bottle of Mou-Tai — such a small bottle to cause so much distress. With regret I threw it out of the window and my companion was reproachfully silent as we made the long circular drive down into Chungking. (I met MacDiarmid a few days later at the festival. I think he was a little annoyed at the presence of an English writer at a Burns festival, but when I spoke to him about the blends of Scotch which I preferred he became friendly).
We were lodged in a very comfortable hotel architecturally based on the Temple of Heaven in Pekin, and we won golden opinions, when we were asked whether we preferred European or Chinese food, by giving the right answer. Our Russian fellow guests (it was still the period of entente) had chosen European, and there were large crates of food from Moscow outside the back door. As a reward we were taken into the kitchen and introduced to the chef who was secretary of the local Communist Party.
The golden opinions cannot have lasted long. The Mayor of Chungking invited us to dinner at the hotel, and the chef surpassed himself. The food was Szechuan which is justly regarded as the best in China. The Mou-Tai too was excellent. The trouble which had so long been brewing between me and the Professor switched suddenly and unexpectedly and Lord Chorley was the victim.
I had been asked in London to enquire into the fate of an imprisoned writer called, I seem to remember, Mr Hu Feng. As we relaxed over the Mou-Tai at the end of our magnificent meal I asked the Mayor if he happened to know anything about the case of Mr Hu Feng. "Oh, of course, yes," he replied. "Mr Hu Feng is a citizen of Chungking."
"Then I suppose," I went on with a certain lack of tact, "you will be relieved when he is at last brought to trial and you will learn whether he is guilty or innocent."
"He must be guilty," the Mayor replied, "or he would never have been arrested." There was what seemed a long moment of silence. I think all four of us were a little stunned, even Mrs Smith, by the frankness of his reply. Then Lord Chorley spoke up to ease the embarrassment and only made it worse. He even rose to his feet to emphasize the serious intent of his words.
"All of us here," he said, "realize the special difficulties you suffer from in the People's Republic, overrun as you are by spies from Taiwan."
The image of the Times map flashed before my eyes — the huge white patch of China extending from Canton in the south to the wastes of Sinkiang and in the far north to Mongolia and off-set, like a little green ear drop, Taiwan. China "overrun" by spies? Excited as I was no doubt by the Mou-Tai I too scrambled to my feet. I was deeply shocked, I said, to hear an English lawyer speak in such outrageous terms. Was a man considered in his eyes to be guilty without being tried? In that case I must refuse to travel any further in Lord Chorley's company. The dinner party broke up.
Next day was Easter day. I attended a crowded Mass in the Catholic cathedral and when I returned to the hotel I felt a sense of guilt, which was increased when Lord Chorley met me and held out his hand and apologized for his conduct. The apology of course should have been mine. However we shook hands and forgave each other and next day found us quite amicably sharing a cabin on the boat to Hangkow.
The only irritant in the party was now the Professor who continued to talk in paragraphs. He shared a cabin with our male guide, and Mrs Smith who remained in a kind motherly way superior to our quarrels shared a cabin with the young woman guide. She was always quite beautifully calm and a credit, I felt, to her Communist faith. Half the boat was given over to soldiers for whom patriotic music was played throughout the day. The four of us were partitioned off from them in a sort of first-class of which we were the only members.
I do not remember whether it was the first night or the second night on board, after dinner on deck, and of course some glasses of that insidious Mou-Tai, that I could bear the Professor's paragraphs no longer. Our voices were raised. I forget what terms I used, they must have been severe, for the Professor threatened to throw me into the Yangtze-kiang. I expect it was Mrs Smith who calmed things down and we went to bed.
In the middle of the night I was woken by extraordinary noises, as though somebody was being strangled. They seemed to come from next door, and I thought at once of the dangerous Professor. He too had drunk a lot of Mou-Tai. Was he assaulting his cabin companion, our young and friendly guide? The choking sounds continued. I looked across the cabin at Lord Chorley. He was sleeping peacefully. Something had to be done. I got up and went into the corridor and banged furiously on the Professor's door. "Stop that fucking noise, you bugger," I shouted. There was silence and I went back to bed.
I fell asleep, but when I woke again it was to the same cries of strangulation, only this time they seemed to come from the deck above. Had our guide escaped there and been pursued by the murderous Professor? Would he, as a substitute for me, be flung into the Yangtze-kiang? After a look at Lord Chorley who slept on peacefully I left the cabin to go on deck, but then I realized the true origin of the strange sounds —it was just the Chinese language. Two cooks were talking to each other in the kitchen.
Next morning when we were all together Mrs Smith remarked with motherly disapproval, "Mr Greene, why were you shouting those bad words in the passage last night?"
I explained how I had feared that the Professor was strangling our guide. I don't know what the Professor thought, but I had the feeling that then and there I gained the guide's trust and friendship.
I had quarrelled with Lord Chorley. I had quarrelled with the Professor, there was no one else left to quarrel with, for no one, I believed, could possibly quarrel with Mrs Smith. Our short stay in Hangkow was peaceful and so was our train journey back to Pekin (I appreciated the Chinese thoughtfulness in providing fly-flippers in the restaurant car), and it was a relief to me to learn in the hotel that the Margaret Lane group had arrived.
Only one thing went wrong. Both parties were expected to take tea with the Minister of Culture, but we were nearly an hour late in joining him because Miss Beryl de Zoete, the dancer and companion of Arthur Waley, had got locked in her lavatory and nobody seemed able to open the door.
Together we did the tourists' sights and then the Lane party left on the route they had chosen and we four were entertained at a farewell dinner outside Pekin. I am sure that the occasion would have gone off splendidly if I hadn't been there.
Lord Chorley made an impeccably brief speech of thanks, but then to my dismay the Professor found it necessary to make another speech which threatened to be as long as the longest of his paragraphs and which gave me time to drink another glass of Mou-Tai. The Professor began, "I want to join my thanks to those of Lord Chorley so admirably expressed by him, and I want to add only one thing — that we have paid our Chinese hosts — not to speak of our two friendly and efficient guides — perhaps the greatest compliment in our power by behaving with such complete naturalness in their presence, and moreover I feel . . ."
I could bear no more of it. I rose in a rage to my feet. "We have done nothing of the sort," I said, "we have behaved abominably and we owe our hosts a very deep apology." The Professor sat down and the party ended, but before we left the Professor took me on one side. He was not angry. He was only hurt. "I do wish you hadn't interrupted my speech, Greene," he said, "you cannot have realize the circumstances which made it so necessary, You see this afternoon Lord Chorley quarrelled with Mrs Smith."

Mason, Richard. The world of Suzie Wong. (London : Collins, 1957).
http://www.lacobie.org/mecca/Suzie.html.
1960 Hollywood Version directed by Richard Quine, with Nancy Kwan, William Holden, Sylvia Syms.
When Richard Mason arrived in Hong Kong in 1956, he stepped off the Star Ferry in Wan Chai and checked into the then harbour-front Luk Kwok Hotel, looking for inspiration for his next novel.
In 1957, Richard Mason wrote "The World of Suzie Wong", about an young aspiring English artist who falls in a passionate love with a beautiful Chinese prositute. It became the third and most successful of his novels and sold million copies throughtout the world.
In 1956, Richard Mason stepped off the Star Ferry at Wan Chai [Hong Kong] looking for inspiration for a novel and booked a room at accommodation recommended by his friend. The hotel was located at the harbour-fronted Luk Kwok Hotel, which was then popular pick-up place used by prositutes.
According to Guy Haydon, who wrote Foreword for The World of Suzie Wong, Luk Kwok Hotel was one of the Wan Chai waterfront's tallest buildings then, at the towering height of six storeys. It was a perfect model for Richard Mason's Nam Kok hotel, a popular pick-up brothel used by Suzie and her bar girlfriends. The building itself survived until the 1980s.
In Mason's story, among those bar girls, they maligned and competed each other to get the status of a "respectable girl". They were proud to have a book that should highlight their kind. In those days of innocence and taboos concerning sex and prostitution, the book was a revelation and immense hit, not just in Hong Kong but around the world.
Mason's story also depicts a racial tension between westerners and Chinese and a strong struggle of elite and poor. In his book, Suzie wears a western dress to lift up her status. Suzie fears accepting Robert's proposal of marriage due to her class of prostitute, a bottom class in the society then.
Richard Mason's story was so popular then, and was followed by a successful stage play that ran for two years on Broadway. In 1960, Paramount released a film version, starring William Holden as Robert Lomax and Nancy Kwan as Suzie.
As Nancy Kwan acted so real and so true, a character of Suzie Wong helped bring Hong Kong before the world's gaze, and played a part in the popular recognition of the territory - and in that way made a contribution to its development.

[Hawthorne, Nathaniel]. Fu gu chuan qi [ID D30149].
Yang Lixin and Hou argued that The scarlet letter was 'historic novel about colonial America, and it exposed the Puritan bourgeoisie's hypocrisy', likewise The house of seven gables ' told a sad story in which the bourgeoisie's accumulation of wealth by all means led to a family's miseries'. As for The Blithedale romance, they labeled it 'a novel about social problems' in which Hawthorne articulated his opinions regarding social life and reform. Hawthorne's ideas were 'conservative and romantic. Catering to politics, translators pointed out that The Blithedale romance 'depict the intellectuals' lives and fates in America in the nineteenth century'.

Soren Egerod unterrichtet an der Universität Kopenhagen.

Edoarda Masi reist nach China und studiert an der Beijing-Universität.

George Roerich ist Leiter der Abteilung für Philosophie- und Religionsgeschichte Indiens am Institut für Asienwissenschaften der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Moskau.

Mark Tobey experimented briefly with pure calligraphic ink gestures.
Er schreibt [Datum unbekannt] :
"Some critics have criticized me for being what they called an Orientalist and for using Oriental models for my work. But they were wrong. Because when I was struggling in Japan and China with Sumi-ink and the brush, trying to understand the calligraphy of the Far-East, I became aware that I would never be anything other than the Westerner that I am. But what did develop there was what I call the calligraphic impulse that has opened out new horizons for my work. Now I could paint the turmoil and tumult of the great cities, the intertwining of the lights and the streams of people caught up in the mesh of their net."

Sorokin, Vladislav Fedorovich. Zheng Zhenduo : Article about his talks with Zheng Zhenduo in Moscow in Oct. 1957, when Zheng was on an official visit to the Soviet Union as the PRC deputy minister of culture.
"Zheng Zhenduo did not like to talk about his translations and regretted not knowing Russian, which compelled him to rely on English and German translations in selecting and interpreting the works. He also spoke coolly of his early articles Russian literature of the period of realism, The reasons for the flowering of Russian literature and its impact and A short essay on the history of Russian literature, published in 1923. They were based on non-Russian sources, mostly English, and probably contain quite a few mistakes."

Fu, Lei. Fragments of my translation experience [ID D38986].
My hesitation [about translating a literary work] has its theoretical foundations. In the first place, because of my love of literature and the high regard I have for all literary activity, I will consider any damage done to a work of art to be equivalent to a distortion of truth… A translator who does not thoroughly understand the original, who cannot empathize with it, will definitely not be able to arouse deep sympathy in his readers. Further, the sympathy and understanding each person is capable of is determined by individual differences in character… One needs to read a literary work that one desires to translate four or five times, in order to become familiar enough with the story to be able to analyze it perceptively, from clear images of the characters, and slowly grasp the profound but intricate ideas buried between the lines of the text… I have revised my translation of Voltaire's Candide eight times, but I am still unsure how much of the spirit of the original I have managed to convey.
I feel strongly that :
1. As far as literary genres are concerned, we should translate with a clear sense of our strengths and weaknesses…
2. With regard to the different literary schools, we should know which school we fit best into : Romantic or Classicist, Realist or Modernist ?...
The second reason why I need to take translation seriously is my lack of academic preparation. The little bit of everything that I know is of little use when it comes to practical application. Since our literature is written for the whole society and for every individual, it is naturally related to politics, economics, philosophy, science, history, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and even astronomy, geography, medicine and the divinatory sciences… How distinct the Chinese way of thinking is from the Western ! Westerners are fond of the abstracts ; they love analysis. The Chinese prefer the concrete ; they are strong at synthesis. If we do not completely assimilate the spirit of the work to be translated, but transfer word for word in a stilted manner, the original will not only lose all its beauty, but become abstruse and incomprehensible, thoroughly confusing the reader… I retranslated Jean Christoph not just to correct my own errors ; rather, the classical literary language used in my earlier translation creates a jarring hybridization of styles… The language problem is basically one of aesthetic insight. To raise the standard of translations, we must first work out some objective criteria so that we can tell good translations from bad ones.

Max Loehr reist nach Taiwan um über Song Malerei zu forschen.

Thomas Anthony Keith Elliott ist Counsellor der britischen Botschaft in Beijing.