“The Correspondence of John Dewey, 1871-1952” (Publication, 1919-1939)

April 15, 1919
Professor John Dewey c/o The Government University Peking
My dear Professor Dewey
On the basis of the following telegram President Butler cabled to the Chancellor that you had been granted leave of absence in order to accept the suggestion that you lecture at the Government University Peking.
President Butler Columbia University
Professor Dewey consents lecture one year at Chinese Government University pending your concurrence. Kindly cable.
Thaiyuenpei [Cai Yuanpei] Chancellor Government University
President Butler is delighted that you will have the opportunity and is sure you can accomplish much of lasting good by work at this institution.
Trusting that all is going well with you, I beg to remain
Faithfully yours Frank D. Fackenthal

Letter from John Dewey to Sabino Dewey
Tuesday April 22. [1919]
Dear Sabino, You have probably heard more than we have that Lucy is coming sailing May 20, and Mr Barry too. The latter was great surprise. As soon as we heard we decided to leave for China right away so as to get back sooner; we sail from Kobe the 27th, next sunday. It takes one day to go thru the Inland Sea, between the Japanese Islands and about three more I think to cross to Shanghai. My former Chinese students seem to be making as elaborate plans for our reception as we have nejoyed here. The only trouble is that I shall have to lecture all the time to help even up. I dont know the program exactly, but I know it calls for lectures in Shanghai, Nanking and Peking and I presume other places. You look up your geography and you will see how far apart the places are. When the Chinamen were here I got the impression Nanking was a kind of suburb of Shanghai, they talked so about running over there, but I see from the time table it takes five hours or more. I hope we can go up the Yangste River to Hankow, by boat, but that doesnt seem to be on my paid schedule, and it may be better to postpone it till next fall if should stay over. I have had a letter from the President of a missionary colllge in Nanking, [Rev. Arthur John] Bowen by name, inviting us to stay at their house while we are there. I dont know whether he is of the Bowen family well known in the Islands. Mama has written Lucy full particulrs if only she gets the letter before she leaves. Anyway she understands to about going to the Nitobes. We have written them so that they [in ink w. caret] will be on the lookout for her, if we are not back. We have also written her about the possibility of stopping over one steamer in Honolulu. Of course we dont know how that will fit in with circumstances including Mr Barry's plans, bu and so we dont urge it except if if she wants to and it is convenient all around…
Tell Lucy to be sure to mail a letter postcard to us, care Dr Suh Hu [Hu Shi] Government University, Peking, to come [ink del.] by the Korea steamer, in case she stops over and a letter to mail in Yokahama when she leaves the steamer if she doesnt. In fact if she comes right thru she better cable us after she has got her mail at the Nitobes unless we write something different…
Dad
Professor Hu [Shi] is going to run down from Peking to Shanghai about a thousand miles to meet us when we arrive…

Letter from John & Alice Chipman Dewey to Dewey children
May first Shanghai [1919]
Dear children,
We have slept one night in China, but we havent any first impressions of China, because China hsnt revealed itself to our eyes as yet. Mamma compares it to Detroit Mich, and except that there is less coal smoke, the descritpion hits it off, also like the suburban districts of London in the villa districts, where there is lots of land about every house. Certainly some foreigners have succeeded in making money out of China. This is said to be literally an international city, but I havent learned yet just what the technique is; every country seems to have its own postoffice tho, and its own front door yeard, and when we were given a little auto ride yesterday, we found that the car couldnt go into Chinatown because it had no license, for that district. We are haunted by a suspicion that t[h]e young men who have us in charge have more enthusiasm than wordly wisdom or official pull—in other words they belong to the younger generation who are trying to reform the established order, and are as popular as such people generally are. Howver we have little to go on so far. Altho the Univ of Peking cabled Butler three weeks ago, they havent had a reply yet, so we dont as yet know any more about our future than we doid in Japan I lecture here twice, saturday and sunday; monday we go to Hangchow which is said to be scencially one of the most beautiful places in Chin, and was I believe the capital during some one of the numerous dynasties that hve ruled over China…
May 2
Now we have seen something of China, so far as Shanghai is China at all, and to day we are to see more, going to Chinatown. Our reception committee here consists of Suh Hu [Hu Shi], who took a thirty six hour trip from Peking to meet us, a man from Nanking Teahcers College, and a local Shanghai teacher, named Chinang who took his Ph D at T C a year or so ago. The "returned student" is a definite category here, and if and when China gets on its feet, the American university will have a fair share of the glory to its credit, and T C its due share in the pie. They came with a frinds auto and took us to a Chinese newspaper office where we inspected the building and type-setting as per usual, ctea and cake as per ditto, photo the same, then were taken to the biggest printing house in the east, prints most of the textbooks and verything else, including money for the Republic, then to the house of Mr Nieh, the man who lent the care aforesaid, a big house with a big garden, full of people, his mother and sisters being brought and introduced, the mother evidently a character who cant speak English, but who is the daughter of the greatest statesmen, so we are told, of the last dynasty, and who has ten children or more, on being at Columbia now, and forty grandchildren. She has recently offered a prize for the best essay on the method of abolishing concubinage, in reply to which eight hundred were sent in. More tea and a funny Chinese dish, called meat pie, then we go to sea the cotton spinning and ewaving factory owned by theis family—who are Christians. There is not even the pretence at labor laws here there is in Japan, some children six years old, not many thot, and wages of the operatives mainly women in the spinning dept 3o cents a day at the highest, 32 cwnts Mex, while in the ewaving dept they have piece wrok and get up to 4o cents.
This is Papas and I cant take it out so I will tell you something of what we had to eat in one small afternoon. First lunch of all courses here at the hotel. Then we went to the Newspaper where we had tea and cake about four. From there to the h[o]use of the daughter of the leading statesman of the Manchus, she being the lady of the small feet and of the ten children who has offered a prize for the best essay on the ways to stop concubinage, which they call the whole system of plural marriage. They say it is quite unchanged among the rich There we were given a tea or rare sort, unknown in our experience. Two kinds of meat pies which are made in the form of little cakes and quite peculiar in taste, delicious, also cake. Then after the factory we went to the restaurant where we were to have dinner. First we got into the wrong hotel and there while we were waiting they gave us tea. We were struck by the fact that they asked for nothing when we elft and thanked us for coming to the wrong place Then we went to the right hotel across the street from the first. They called it the corner of Broadway and 42nd st and it is that. There is a big roof garden besides the hotels and they are both run by the Department stores wich have their places underneath. The Chinese are as crazy about dept stores as Jap. It may be a sad commentary on the human character that one can eat more than he can remember, but that is what we did last night. First of all when we went into the room which was all Chinese furniture, very small round table in the middle and the rows of stools along one side for the singing birls who do not dance here. These stools we did not use as all thse young Chinese are ashamed of that institution and want to get rid of it. On a side table were almonds shelled, nice little ones different from ours and very sweet. and beside them dried watermelon seeds which I could not crack so I did not taste. All the Chinese nibbled them with relish. Two ladies came, both of them had been in N.Y. to study. All these people speak and understand English in earnest. On the table were little pieces of sliced ham, the famous preserved eggs which taste like hard boiled eggs and look like dark colored jelly, and little dises of sweets shrimps etc. To these we helped ourselves with the chp sticks tho they insisted on Giving Pa and me little plates on which they spooned out some of each. Then followed such a feast as we had never experienced the boys taking off one dish after another and replacing them with others in the center of the table to which we helped ourselves. There was no special attempt at display of fine dishes such as you might have expected with such cooking and such expense and such as would have happened in Japan. We had chicken and duck and pigeon and veal and pigeon eggs in soup and fish and little oysters that grow in the ground, very delicious and delicate, and nice little vegetables and bamboo sprouts mixed in with the others, and we had shrims cooked and sharks fin and birds nest and this has no taste at all by itself but is cooked in Chicken broth to give it some and is a sort of very delicate soup but costs a fortune and that is its real reason for being, It is gelatine which almost all dissolves in the cooking We had many more things than these and the boy in a rather dirty white coat and an old cap om his head passing round the hot perfumed wet towels every few courses and for desert we had little cakes made of bean paste filled up with almond paste and other sweets, all very elaborated made and works of are to look at but with too little taste to appeal much to us, then we had fruits bananas and apples and pears cut up in pieces each with a tooth pick in it so it can be eaten easily. Then we had a soup made of fishes stomach, or air sac. Then we had a pudding of the most delicious sort imaginable made of a mould of rice filled in with eight different symbolic thinge that I dont know any thing about, but they dont cut much part in the taste. In serving this dish we were first given a little bowl half full of a sauce thickened and looking like a milk sauce. It was really made of powdered almonds. Into ths you put the pudding and it is so good that I regretted all that had gone before and I am going to learn how to make it. They say all the ladies in China learn how to cook and it is their business to look after the cooking and to know how to do it themselve and to do parts of it. They still have many children. We saw two little ones yesterday beisdes several bigger ones scampering out of sight. One little daughter of Mrs Chang of two and a half with a costume of crimson brocade made just like the suit of the small boy of four. We thought she was a boy as her hair was cut tight to her head. Also a baby of five months with the most wonderful costume of cap and shoes, slippers and socks, and some little trousers made with wide split in the middle, of a dark red plaid cotton. The baby was fat and cunning as could be and was already jumping on her feet. Well the little things that make up the interest here are endless. A Daughter
Friday May 3rd. [2nd]
This is pap again, and as I dont know about the daughter, I will return briefly to the factory. Mamma remarked that the manager was the only person in a fact[o]ry who had ever told the truth in answering questions, and Hu [Shi] replied that lying showed that a moral consciousness had begun to dawn, while here thatre was not even a consciousness of anything wrong yet. He and his firneds have given up politics I judge as a bad job, and are devoting themselves to what they call a litterary revolution, which isnt as purely literary as it sounds, since it means using the spoken current language for writing, and without this modern questions cannot really be discussed… We are going to see more of the dangerous daring side of life here I predict We are very obviously in the hands of young China. What it will do with us makes us laugh to anticipate— Evedently they are having the time of theri lives and evidently they do not see what it is exactly best to do. But nothing woies us. We are not getting rich, but we are to have our expenses and we ought to have a very good time. Here in Shanghai we are in the hands of some educatiional association of this whole region or districs or whatever they call it. There is a normal school in Hangchow but chiefly sightseeing they say. We saw big men with queus, they said they are from the north and every one scrambling and fighting for a job like N.Y. Quite unlike any thing in Japan. And a sp[?]al streets also smae. Our men are coming. [John Dewey]

Letter from John Dewey to Nicholas Murray Butler
Shanghai, May 3 '19
President Nicholas Murray Butler, My dear Mr Butler,
I wrote Dean Woodbridge from Japan speaking among other things of the possibility of my being invited to remain in China for educational work next year, and my desire to do so, if it could be arranged. Later Dr Suh Hu [Hu Shi] cabled you, after writing me to secure my consent. On my arrival here I was met by him from Peking as well as by educators from here and Nanking. They all feel that the present in quite a critical time in the educational and intellectual development of China, and that a representative of Western and especially American thought can be more useful now than at any other time for a long period. As for myself, I prize highly the unusual opportunity to get some acquaintance with Oriental thought and conditions. I hope therefore that it will be possible to grant the official request which I understand the Minister of Education is about to make of you and the Columbia authorities. I shall be more useful in the future to Columbia because of this experience, and incidentally I hope my presence here will have the effect of increasing the number of students from Japan and China who go to Columbia. Of course you must hear frequently of the present great influence of Columbia in China particularly. There are is a Columbia Alumni Association here of about forty. Many persons have assured me that the present influence of Columbia men in China is greater than that of the graduates of any other American or European University.
In my visit here now I am giving lectures to the public schools teachers of Hangchow, Nanking, [ink comma] and Peking besides this city. In Japan beside giving philosophical lectures in the Imperial Universities of Tokyo and Kyoto, I spoke to teachers in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe.
Sincerely yours, | John Dewey.
Permanent address Care Yokahama Specie Bank Tokyo; Till June 15th, Care Government University, Peking.

Letter from John Dewey to Dewey children
May 9 [1919]
Dear children, Im writing from Hangchow, a city some four or five hours south from Shanghai, and the thermometer at half past four p.m stands in the house at 94, and I dont know that it has been much below this day or night for three days. Mamma is now speaking to the girls of various schools in the big hall here, and she hasnt slept much the aforesaid three nights Im afraid she will be too used up. We came here sunday and this p m is about the first free time Ive had; I use this paper because I havent any other and because you may learn seomthing from what's on the other side, and we are staying with the Barnetts, he being the Y M C A secy who wrote the appeal. Japan was rather baffling and tanatslizing. China is overpowering, and the size of the difficulties and obstacles to be overcome, in modernizing China and even in maintaining its continued existence as an independent nation are I think depressing to most, the educated Chinese who realize the situation included. One could write more easily in Japan, because in spite of the reserve over everything, the unlifted screen, things are more or less tied up in packages and ticketed, while here one only ctaches separet glimpses of a vast panoramic kaleidoscope. I doubt if the Chinese are personally as much as sealed mystery as reported sometimes, but the country is so vast, and the parts of it so different, and the accumulations from the past so enormous, and one would have to live here so long to begin to get hold of even the most important which are hneeded to understand things, that theit is easy to see how and where the idea of China as an impenetrable mystery came from. Here is one incident which personally concerns us, and also seems typical. The other day the Peking univ students started a parade in protest of the Paris Peace Conference action in turning the German interests in China over to the Japanese. Being interfered with by the police they got more unruly and beat up the Chinese minister to Japan who negotiated the treaties that sold China out, he having been bribed; they burned the house where he was staying,5 and he went to the hospital, in fact was reported dead. Well, in one sense this || was a kind of Halloween students spree with a somewhat serious political purpose attached. In another sense, it may be—tho probably not—the beginning of an important active political movement, out of which anything may grow. All the educated japanese [ink del.] Chinese [in ink] regard the beating not as lynching but as just expression of social disapprobation; they are sorry the man wasnt killed. Some twenty students were arrested; practically every organization in China is sending telegrams to the government requesting that they be not punished If they should be, [pencil comma] there may be a kind of revolution directed against the present government in form and the Japanese in reality. This way of going at things seems typical of the way China acts, and it is equally typical that no one will guess which way things are going to turn whether this ais a temporary excitement or the beginning of the new political movement China needs. And the most typical thing is that tho the Chinese have known the facts for some years, they have done nothing—except hate the japanese and hope that America and japan would get into war and the U S lick Japan. In fact during this time they have allowed things to go from bad to worse so far as internal division and disorganization are concerned, and so far as wholesale graft by the political authorities—not quite all—is concerned. The only reason for not believeing the stories along this line you hear of is because they come so far short of the fatcs. In fact if anyone put down the things that are alluded to in passing and taken as a matter of course no one in [pencil underline] America would believe them; he would think we had been gulled by some one—Governors [G in ink] who in the last few years who have got title to all the mines in their provinces as big and rich in coal as perhaps Penn—others who own onetenth of the land in a province bigger than NY and so on. Well, they stood by and allowed all this to go on, including the selling out to Japan, and did nothing—but the students row may set them off. If you can figure this out, you will understand the country better than I do. I am pretty sure however that China is the country of pure original human nature, just as Japan is the high-||ly cultivated, trained, over-trained, country. Well, where it affects [in ink] us is this. Accordinding to etiqueete here, the Chancellor of the University is "responsible" for the students action. If the government punishes them he will doubtless reisgn on the ground that he is the one really to blame. He is a liberal, and if he goes I think our invitation to the University will doubtleas be lost and forgotten. They were planning a conference of the chief educational officials in Peking for the last two weeks in June, and this will probably be called off to, if the liberals lose out. In that case we shall beack in Tokyo or Japan as according to recent letters, whereas according to this other plan, developed I think since we wrote last, we should be here two weeks longer than we expected. Our guide and friend who wrote had charge of us in Sh and who piloted ^us^ down here and was to have interpreted here, left suddenyl for Sh on receipt of the Peking news to see what had happenned, and how it was going to affect the plans made for us. We have been to two dinner parties here, and two lunch parties since we came Monday—nor Friday, almost all Chinese guests. There are fewer American returned students here, mostly the authorities here having been educated in Japan—which they hate, and whose educational system they have slavishly copied, in because of the hate, because they havent seen anything else and because they have an idea that it was Japan' system that has enabled Japan to put it over on them. But the scheme is as unfitted for big sprawling go as you please China as it is fitted for compact and obeyful Japan. The impressive thing about their hatred for Japan is that it isnt loud and boisterous; it is just as much a matter of fact as the weather, and it is combined with great moral contempt. There was a rumor in Sh sunday that Wilson was assisinated, Every Chinaman who spoke of it said the Japanese had started the story. When asked why, the answer was always because that is the way they do everything—the point being that here assasination is resorted to only when a man has become an object of universal detestation and only then.
Hangchow is a city of six or seven hundred thousand and the centre of both the best tea—which is much like the best green tea of Japan near Kyoto and of the best silks. We have been to a big silk filature,9 quite modrenized and run by Chinese and also a silk school where mamma was delighted by seeing absolutely everything in the line of worms, coconns the care of them—this is just the tail end of the season, and we had been told before we shouldnt see them feeding. But they had em, including the wild kind that makes the Pongee silk, brought from another district for experimentation. They live not on oak trees but on what seemed to be a kind of chestnut. They are experimenting crosing with japanese, french and Italian breeds. It is said the quality of their own coccons has deteriorated. In the factory we say the treads drawn the cocoons—girls in charge and very skilful.
Thank the Lord a rain has set in since we I began and perhaps the weather will change before we give up thr ghost. Hangchow is on a Lake known as West Lake, one of the most spots in China, scenically and historically, quite beautiful though not over three or four feet deep anywhere, hills and mts about. We have been taken out and around on it some three times, once to visit a missionary American college on the hills overlooking the big Hangchow river, the situation is wonderful when you get to itn like Pacific Heights in Honolulu as mamma pointed out after I had feebly compared it to the outlook from Berkeley hills. We go back to Shanghai sunday, then in a day or two to Nanking where we stay two weeks, unless everything is upset. I have given but one lecture to about eight or nine hundred, and had a conference with about fifty—called a conference, in fact a series of brief lectures on various topics—and another conference tomorrow. In many ways they are pathetic, so genuinely openminded and anxious to learn many of them, and yet so up gaainst conditions, that it seems hopeless to make suggestions and preach theories. It is significant that they thing they respond to most is the idea of making the child rather the lesson the centre. In Japan in spite of the uniform love of children, I doubt if they could grasp the idea.
[John Dewey]

Letter from John Dewey to K. J. Koo
Nanking, May 15, 1919.
My dear Mr. Koo:
I enjoyed my visit to the office yesterday very much, and am grateful to you for your great kindness. I was much impressed by the very beautiful character of the work your Press is doing. I do not know any country where such fine stone color reproductions are made. I saw my American friends last evening and advised them to go at once to the office and see the pictures. I shall continue to speak of your work, and shall feel I am doing Americans a great favor in calling their attention to the fact that artistic reproductions are available. I have long been a great admirer of Chinese painting, and I cannot tell you what a great pleasure it is to know that the masterpieces are available in reproductions. I do not know whether you have an American market or an American agent, but if I can be of any use to you when I return to New York, I hope you will let me know.
Again, please let me and Mrs. Dewey thank you for your very thoughtful suggestion and your great kindness in carrying it out. We appreciate your generosity very highly and shall esteem the pictures for their intrinsic beauty and as a souvenir of our visit to Shanghai.
Sincerely yours, John Dewey

Letter from John Dewey to Wendell T. Bush
Care Y M C A Peking China Aug 1 '19
Dear Mr Bush,
Your letter of early June came two or three days ago. Mails are uncertain here, especially as the technique of the Bank in Tokyo is of a primitively casual type. I am glad to have a permanent address here, for while we cannot stay where we are longer than a few weeks more (we are with a Princeton man, a Y M C A secy, whose family has gone to the seashore) mails will be recd. You are owed many apologies rega[r]ding all the troubles you had about our staying over. Yet it wouldnt be easy to tell from whom the apologies should come, unless it was the young Chinese men who saw us in Tokyo and said they would see Dean Woodbridge. They would have explained that it was not expected that Columbia would bear any expense unless a regular exchange was arranged. Other wise the difficulties were due to the upset in the university, and we had no idea till your last cablegram to Suh Hu [Hu Shi] came that there was any trouble except in the delay of the cables, as we didnt know that any return inquiry [in ink w. caret] had been recd. But there is no reason in the world why the cablegram should have come out of your pocket, and if you will only allow a reimbursement Im asking Evelyn to pay you for it. I wrote an article on the Students Movement for the N R which you may [in ink w. caret] have seen if they published it. It couldnt give the color of the thing however nor what it meant to the boys and girls, or even to the people of China . An after echo took place the other day. The militarists in present control of things here form what they call the Anfu Club, which has a majority in Parliament. They hate the Chancellor of the University whom they regard as morally responsible for the students taking an interest in politics—altho he himself is no politician—in fact is own interest is in esthetics and literature—Paris educated. So last week they bribed a few students, some ex-students and a few more who were just applying for admission to demonstrate agt the Chancellor. They got together about fifteen, when the other students heard of it and to the number of about a hundred attacked them, locked them up, and made them sign a written confession. Then a few days ago, some of the attacking students were arrested charged with assualt and battery. Now the interesting thing about the matter from our standpoint is that public opinion is entirely against this "interference" by the police. The matter is wholly one between students, not one for the courts. It wasnt at all sporty for the beaten (quite literally I think) party to appeal to the law. So some of the students who were dismissed by the trial judge as quite innovent decline to leave jail. They are staying there as a protest! [ink exclamation mark] This place [in ink w. caret] is really upside down on the globe as you can see, and it makes life very amusing not to say interesting. The other strange thing is the number of foreigners who get converted to the Chinese standpoint. Except in Shanghai and some of the other outports where many foreigners especially British pride themselves on having been in China twenty five years and never set foot in Chinese town—tho I cant quite see what good it does them as eighty to ninety percent of the population in the foreign settlements is Chinese. To go back to the student strike. I was invited last the first of the week to a conference of heads of higher schools in this province to consider the reopening of schools. The great majority of heads are very conservative and strongly opposed to the strike and to the students having any part in politics. So as the students have been saving the country all summer, and are probably somewaht cocky and unruly, there is much nervousness about what will happen when the schools reopen. The action of the peace conference as regards Shantung has done ^one^ thing that probably wasnt intended—it has stimulated in one summer [w. caret] the development of national consciousness in China as more than otherwise might have happened in ten years. Nationalistic consciousness in its early stages is apt to be rather blind, but tho the Japanese have tried to make out on one hand that the movement isnt national but instigated by American traders money, [ink comma] and on the other hand have tried to change it into a general anti-foreign movement, it has so far been quite restrained. Except that the illiterate and common people have got it in their heads that the Japanese are carrying on a food poisoning campaign, and when you recal how many Americans believed in the groundglass stores etc, it is easy to see that there may still be violent outbreaks, if the rumors keep up.
It still isnt certain under just what auspices my lectures will be given, some of them under certain Chinese Societies for promoting modern learning, as they have guaranteed me a salary in case the University situation doesnt stay cleared up. We shall be here into March and then move southwards, to Nanking etc. It is very hard to get living accommodations; the Rockefeller Foundation which is putting in the big medical plant has had to build over thirty houses for its staff already. We are on the trail of the flat, almost the only one in Peking which is given up in Sept by a bank man ordered to the Phillipines, but have had to cable to the U S to the man from whom he subleases and are still waiting for a reply as cables are reported ten days behind. Lucy came a week ago, after a very pleasant month in Japan and we are living in earnest hopes that Evelyn will condescend to join us during the year.
She brougt over with her the mss. of my University lectures there, which I had left for translation into Japanese. Im glad you liked the outline, and I hope you will like the lectures when they come out. I am going over the copy again and shall then send it on to Holt. I cant afford to waste so much good typewriting. I think it has one merit; it is reasonably free from philosophic partisanship, being an attempt to evaluate the modern spirit in general in contrast with that of classic philosophies. I am changing the order of some of the earlier lectures.
Suh Hu is very influential here; the weekly magazine he edits has a circulation of five thousand which is large for this country, and would be in ours for an intellectual organ. The vernacular speech movement which he and some others started is taking widely. The students started twnety or thirty journals this summer, all printed in the spoken language, and there are now many other less ephemeral organs that use it. His history of Chinese philosophy is the first written on modern historic lines. He chafes under the conditions which divert so much of his time tofrom scholarship; he wants to study and write more. If Columbia wanted to offer him the Chinese professorship—if it still vacant—I think he would take it at least for a specified time. I dont see how China can spare him, but it is rather pathetic to see how many of the old students here long for life in the U S. It is a hard proposition they are up against. Many of the things that make it interesting to a mere visitor make it trying for them. I was glad to get a little gossip about university matters. Did [Roberts Bishop] Owen come back? I had heard Coss was not to, and waam glad to know he did. I hope you will have a good time in France. Do you spend the whole year there? We also hope you and Mrs Bush are having a good summer. Please accept the best regards of both of us to both of you. Two years is making a large hole in our New York life and at times we get quite homesick, but after all it is a wonderful experience, and we wish you were here to share it and talk it over with us. It was some comfort to know that some of our friends miss us. When I recal the pace at which New York moves I sometimes wonder whether anybody will remember us when we get back. We get the New York papaers in the Club reading room after they are a month old, and in that respect can follow matters better than we did formerly. Again with affectionate regards,
Sincerely yours, John Dewey

Letter from Alice Chipman Dewey to Jane Dewey
Peking, August 21st. [1919]
Dearest Jane.
... Butter costs $1.20 a pound and it is bad, in a can. Every one Chinese carries home the cutest little round gobs of meat and things done up in a lotus leaf hanging by the stem which makes an eccelent handle. When there are no more leaves for wrapping things they will go back to little sheets of brown paper still made up nto little round gobs and the paper hand made.
We have seen them making paper, each sheet handled and spread on a board to dry and it is of course precious, They use all the old news papers for wrapping and people live by going about the streets to pick up the tine bits either to burn on the temple alters or to sell them for rags to make more paper. No wood is available for paper.
Begging is so common here as to make life very uncomfortable. But people get to know one in this city very quickly and the beggars hang on less than they did when we were strangers to them for now they know we shall give them nothing. The Cinese do not believe in it, it is against the law and the beggars are fat with nursing children hanging to them if they are women, but, in spite, the Chinese will finally give them the minutest cash. It takes twenty cash, at the least, to make a penny. Counting money here is an occupation for a banker. If you change big money in a shop you are sure to get small money back. In the foreign shops I mean for the Chinese are more honest. It takes 138 coppers in small money to make a big dollar. Some day I am going to make the reckless experient which is so easy to work here. Take a dollar and go from one place to another changing it till I have nothing left. What fun, lacking the movies...... We have one afternoon dissipation her and it is going to the Y.M.C.A. buildi[n]g next to us to eat icecream. We might go to the club for tea instead and to day I think I shall do that, to day or tomorrow. As yet I have not put foot inside the club. Mrs Smith brings me books from there. It is not hot at night any more but by day it still is. At night I sleep comfortably under a sheet and even feel a slight chill from the breeze towards morning, There is nothing one longs for more than that chill. The heat is really fierce you just ooze all the time and bath as many times a day as you have time for. It is wonderful how the the coolies stand it. Once I asked my ricsha man why he did not wear a hat and he said it was too hot. If we had any thing active to do we should not s[t]and it long in the sun. At the club they say the mercury has been 108 on the piazza, and it stay pretty even, juntil this last week when the evenisg have lewered some what. No sun strokes amo[n]g the Chinese…
Love, Mother.

Letter from John Dewey to Dewey children
Y M C A Peking Aug 25 [1919]
Dearest children,
… Lucy didnt want to go to a hotel, not that any of us did, and Im sure that the bother of a house would have been an irritating burden to mamma, as the housekeeping would have come on her and the conveniences arent exactly modern. It was amusing to see a notice of Miss LaMotte's book in an American magazine in which it told how cheap houses were in Peking—we pay 80, aside from furniture, for this five small romm apt. Another one with six large rooms rents for 200 a month. Equally amusing w[a]s her account of the fear of robbers here, and the walls with broken glass and the fierce Mongolian dogs. Peking is one of the best policed cities in the world; Id much rather take my chances here than in Harlem. She wrote in the hotel I think with a Japanese curier for authority. We have to leave here Sept fourth and the Deerings leave Sept fourth, so it seems quite providential. Mr [Paul S.] Reinsch as you have probably seen is leaving. Nobody knows the reason here, if there is any aside from his wanting to go back. He isnt very popular, or Mrs R with the foreign community here, but is very well liked by the Chinese which speaks well for his official performanes Judging from what we hear a man of the type of Morris in Tokyo, with more business experience and ,ore executive pep will be useful from now on anyway. There ought to be about a half dozen of the ablest men in the country here to handle thes situation. It is the growing opinion th[a]t if the U S backs down on either the Shantung issue or the Japanese consortium for reservation of Manchuria and Mongolia, it means the going back to the old policy of the partition of China, as China cant hold its own alone. People here cant understand why the U S doesnt use its financial power and the Europena need of American assitance to compel GT Britain and France to side with us rather than with Japan in handling the whole Eastern question. Maybe it isnt neceasry but there is a feeling here that deals for further concessions and spheres are concerned going on, besides behind the scenes, in case the U S policy fails, and that the [o]ther countries arent giving any active aid to the U S in making it succeed. If so, its a suicidal policy in the end; for the European countries. Japan will get the concessions and spheres in the end; their only way is to help China get on her own feet, which is the obviously policy of the U S, and which is the only thing Japan is afraid of.
We havent a word from Sabino for almost a month, soon after he went to Kuai; we shall be relieved when we hear something. Its rather late to be giving Jane advice ur her year, but I hope she is doing what she wants to do and not what she [t]hinks she ought to do or what she thinks some one else thinks she ought to do. If she wants to give up college entirely and go to sculping or something, she ought to do it, if she can get a good sculp to teach her. We were glad to hear that Evelyns services were getting better peuniary recognition, but hope it doesnt mean that she is going to kept at it so long over there she wont get away to make us a visit, us includes China incidentally.
We are wondering whether there will be a ruction again. Over thrity students including four girls, tried to call on the president about Shantung and especially to ask for the removal of the military governor who torured and killed some merchants and bambooed some students for anto-Japnanese agitation and who (the delegation) instead of seeing the president were arrested by the police. If there isnt another students strike etc. it will probably prove not that they have laid down on the job but they are waiting till they get things better organized, and next time expect to make a thorough job of it. On the surface the militarists have had their own way the last month even more than before the success of the students movement—but something must be going on behind the scenes, and I think it is the effort ot organize the guilds which are powerful but whch have never taken any hand in politics. They got in thru the boycott and will probably have to go further now they are in.
P M Visiting hours are from noon to seven After I had written I began to be afraid that maybe Id been too hopeful but Luc[y]'s temp got to normal last night and was only 99 at ten oclock and also the doctor grins broadly and says the patient is a credit. The Club has a library and we're giving Lucy a course in O Henry. I have just done a foolish thing. The curio dealers tie up some miscellaneous pieces in two blue calico bundles that balance and then invade the house, if they are allowed. We had one entertain us at lunch We had a painting on silk that he asked ten dollars for. If I had a friend I wanted to cure of gambling Id set him to buying curiois in China; there's no difference—which is the true principle of all cures. You always want to see how much they'll come down. So I offered him two, as the picture isnt actaully offensive, and before he left the house I had bought it for three. Now I appeal to Evelyn to know what am I going to do with it? His smile was so ingratiating when he said "Lose money. How much?" that it cost me a dollar. "Very old. Ming. Number one".
Love Dad

Letter from John Macrae to Alice Chipman Dewey
August 26, 1919.
Mrs. John Dewey, c/o Y. M. C. A., Pekin, China.
My dear Mrs. Dewey,
I have just been informed by Prof. Tilly, of Columbia University, that you are interesting yourself in the introduction in China of the phonetic method of teaching English, and I am at once sending you, with our compliments, a copy of Rippmann's "The Sounds of Spoken English and Specimens of English", and Daniel Jones' "English Pronouncing Dictionary", both of which Prof. Tilly informs me you will find useful. It is my understanding that Miss Evelyn Dewey communicated with Prof. Tilly before he consulted with us.
It is a matter of great interest, and, to my mind, of wide importance, that you are taking up this problem during your stay in China. I recently read an editorial in the "World's Work" magazine which, without attempting to analyse the situation technically, dwelt significantly upon the tremendous and world wide importance of introducing some efficient system of phonetics to the Chinese people. Under your leadership and far-seeing initiative, I feel that much may develop from your personal attention to this work. And if there is anything we may do to co-operate with you, it will be a pleasure to do so.
Please extend my kindest personal regards to Prof. Dewey. You may be interested to know that Miss Evelyn Dewey's "New Schools for Old" is receiving prompt and enthusiastic recognition, and shows promise of becoming a very widely used book before the year is out. With my very best hopes for the success of your work, I am,
Very sincerely, [John Macrae]
JM-JKT

Letter from John Dewey to Albert C. Barnes
135 Morrison St Peking China, Sept 15 [1919]
Dear Barnes,
I didnt get your lettr of the end of July till about three or four days ago. We have recently moved into this small aprtment, which we were fortunate enough to hit upon, mostly furnished, after some months of vain hunting and the unwelcome expectation of having to go to a hotel. We inherited the servants with the place, and as the old story goes it is wonderful how much comfort dam heathen can bring into a Christian—(so alleged—) home. When we think of what we are going back to, the exclusion law seems a huge mistake. Lucy celebrated her arrival by coming down in a few weeks with typhoid, but it was a mild case and she has been back from the—very good—hospital a week now. I told Evelyn to send you back the five hundred you were kind enough to let me have. We have been very well taken care of, both in Japan and China, and didnt need the funds as it turned out, but the accommodation on your part was just the same.
My general reactions to the situation here I am putting in articles—some of them are coming out in the N R. and others will come in Asia as I had a acble from them to send them six articles on the general political and social psychology of the Chinese as affecting the preent situation. Taking the word with psychology with a good deal of allowance, Im trying to do this. Its an absurdly pretentious perfromance in one way, with my short stay here and no knowledge f the language. But it will be just as good as most of the stuff travellers put out fr the American reader, and a little better than some for it will give some attempt at interpretation from the Chinese standpiint. It is almost to easy to get up a sympathetic admiration for them, not coming in direct contact to speak of with the disagrreable phases of their life. I have sent more stuff on Japan to the Dial. I dont think it will be as dull as the other one. The atmosphere of Japan has a peculiar restrictive and constrictive influence which it would be hard to analyze or explain. But im Sure almost everyone there suffers from it, the Americans and other foreigners get so used to it tha they dont know what they suffer from; I didnt when I was there, verybody was so friendly and in most ways so open. But there is a hush in the air. I dont know anything just like it. I think it is the reason that so much of writing about Japan is laudatory or eulogistic—that is the only open vent, and seems to be exected some how, waited for by the Japanese, or else just wholesale condemnation in reaction from the irritation of supre subconscious suppressions. In spite of the backardness of China, there is much more openness and outspokenness here which is one of things that one makes one believe the future is with China—but why, of why, dont they get busy and bring in that future. Thats what makes so much despair and disgust about China among foreigners. The puzzle of their contrasting strong and weak sides is one of the most fascinating things Ive ever exerienced, and keeps one always on the alert to see what is coming next. Just now there is a lull with the most activity on the side of the militarists who re strengthening their fences and fortications, because they got scared by the student movement. But now they have things more in hand than ever. But the Chinese principle seems to be to give everybody rope enough to hang himself with—the greater the oppression the greater the ultimate resistance and overthrow. Its a fascinating game to watch, but hard to repress one's desire for a lieel more drect western energy to tackle things before they get to the topling over point. ||
My lectures begin regularly this week, Scattered about—one day a week at the Boxer Indemnity College, two lectures a week at the University, tho one of them is a public rather than a students course, and one at the Board of Education Ministry. We shall be here till about the first of March.
I thot Walter Weyl's article on Wilson was a keen analysis, the best thing of Weyl's I have read. The N R has more pep since Lippman is back.
Please remember me to Mrs Barnes.
Sincerely yours, John Dewey.

Letter from Lucy Dewey to Dewey children
135 Morrison St, Oct 4 [1919]
Dear Folks.
Evelyns letter of Sept 1 came this morning just as we had about given up hope for this boat. Evelyn neednt worry about my getting buried in the past. I spend my mornings running a sewing woman, seeing about getting a horse and ridimg habit, knotting a bed quilt, and reading the magazines in the library. My afternoons are devoted to calls, curio rumaging, and bullying Mamma into hleping me plan dinner parties. Its a gay life. The horse I have on shares with another girl, I dont know just how it is going to work out, I havent riden yet as there is no habit. I hope to be able to start when we get back from Taiyuanfu. Its perfect riding weather now, couldnt be nicer. The quilt is gradually getting done so I wouldnt be able to spend the rainy mornings that way much longer. The "first" calss are gradually getting done, it certainly is a chore, the new people are supposed to call on the old. we arent attempting to do them all, just the people at our legation, the more important Rockefeller and a few of the mishs. Mrs Price, one of the legation, has just come back from America and the afternoon she called on us she said she had made fourteen that afternoon.
Numerous things have happend since I last wrote. Tuesday afternoon we went to the dress rehearsal of the Confucian sacrifice. The temple is a beautiful one with courtyards full of wonderful old Lebanon cedars. It is in very good condition, an unusual thing in Chinese temples, as it was restored by Yuan Shi-kai when he was getting ready to be emperor. We got there early and saw them making the preparations. They had all sorts of musical instruments set out, huge stringed things that we decided must be like the biblical psalteries enormous drums, and frames of bells and triangles. They had a chorus of boys who chanted and went thru formal posturing known as dancing. There were dignified old parties in black satin trimmed with gold who ran around and kowtowed every now and then. They didnt have any animal there that day. It all finished off with the dignified old parties marching off with a speech to Confucius and what would be peices of the animal. It was interesting and very impressive but we didnt understand it much. Most of the high officials were there, tho not the great president. Little Hsu, the power behind the throne, was there, but the Chinese we were with remarked in a casual way, "There goes little Hsu" when he had got all by and all we saw was his back in the distance. Thursday we rose at four in the morning and waited for the president to go by the house He almost never goest on the street as all the streets have to be cleared for him. We had received a police order telling us that no one was to leave the house after three until he had gone by. The soldiers were stationed about fifteen feet apart along the street, there were two or three in every door way, one came up stairs and turned on the light in the hall out side our door. They evidently didnt propose to have any one rush out and bomb the old gent. They had the street strewn with yellow sand in the old imperial way. After much waiting eighteen automobiles went tearing by, going about forty miles an hour The pres was in the last one, a closed car with four men on each running board. What I dont understand is how he got home, as all the soldeirs and everything deperted after him.
Thursday night the Smiths [Possibly William Roy Smith and Marion Parris Smith] came for a farewell dinner. Miss Carl came too She pained the old Empress Dowagers picture, lived in the palace for a year. She has the most interesting stories to tell and is a most entertaining person generally. The Smiths had to leave early to get their train. We are going to miss them very much.
Yesterday the rain came down in sheets and the streets were large rivers This morning was clear and lovely but its all clouded up again now and is cold as Greenland.
We are completely overcome at Evelyns style in living on West 56 street. As she didnt say anything about her plans we dont know when she will move in so I wont take any chances on this letter. We had a nice letter from Mrs Coleman and one grom Miss Cross yesterday. Also I got one from Charles today.
Im slowly freezing to death so will sally forth for some exercise. Lots of love to you all.
Lucy

Letter from John Dewey to Evelyn Dewey
[November 2, 1919]
Dear Evelyn…
Last night we went t[o] another dinnr at the hotel and during the dancing Ed Thomas of Chicago recognized me and astonished me by telling me who he was. He is down here from Chitato spend a month and take the Consular examinations. He thinks a change for the better is approaching in Russia and he wants to be redy for business hen that time comes. He is coming to lunch today and I asked him to stay in this apt while we are away, but that may not prove to be convenient he will decide when he comes. This afternoon we go to Mr Wans wedding at the naval club and tonight at eight we start for Mukden. We are to stay at the Japanese hotel so we shall probable send no letters from there. We expect to stay there not m[o]re than four days…
[John Dewey]

Letter from John Dewey to Dewey children
Tientsin Jan 1 1920
We have got as far as this, both in time and space. We didnt go to the tomb of Confucius after all, as the connections were bad. Slow trains we knew, and when the guides found out they were also only thrid class, they rather withdrew the idea, and mamma hadnt wanted to go anytime, thinking the absent pilgrims and not the tomb the sight to see; while as for me I would willingly have been a present pilgrim if the only one. But we are now deluding ourselves with the prospect of going next spring when we not only see the pilgrims but also climb the sacred mountain. Aise from the exitement of not going and not lecturing, we had a luncheon and exhibition of old Chinese physical exercises with and by General Ma Liang. He is a story by hiself even more so than the Mohammadan meal and the show he gave us, too long to be tucked in, so Ill let it go now, save that the exercises are the original of the Japanese Jiu jitsu, which like everything else Japanese seems to have come from China. However Im bound to ay they have improved on the original a good deal, tho what we saw was well done, including the sickening conclusion, when eight or ten bricks were laid on a mans head and smahed with another brick, and a big paving stone at least four inches think, nearer six, was smashed with a big sledge hammer on the chest of one of the athletes, in fact two in succession one on the east chest and one on the west. He was stripped to the waist with a temperature of about 15 F, and the stone was fairly covered with the thick frost you see on the under side of the stones when they are frozen into the ground. The sight of the rough cold thing on a mans vare skin was almost enough for me, to say nothing of having it broken into four pieces on me. We were also taken to a show, thetre four or five plays acted by school boys of between twelve and sixteen, wh poor boys who are taught regular lessons half a day and plyacting the ot[h]er half, supported by the public, and shows are free. It was more interesting than the professional acting we saw at first, we havent been to a professional in Peking. The first was a moral play with a spoken moral at the end, namely not to take a concubine. Good advice of course, but probably not so much needed by these poor boys as by the millionaire officials. The queerness of the method of teaching the moral to little boys didnt seem to strike anybody. The play began with in a brothel, with the old man coming in to look over the girls, to pick out the one he wanted to buy—four or five were paraded before him. Of course she has a lover who is an habitue of the brothel and who is smuggled into the buyers house as her brother, and for whose sake the lady concubine attempts to poison him [in ink] her husband, [in ink] and a general suicide etc at the end—that is, next to the end, just before the Moral. The others were scenes adapted from the old historic folklore, and one were more interesting, especially as one twelve year old boy has real talent. He could make a lot of money on the vaudeville stage in U S; its funny how similar methods are, barring the ftone they sing in.
Jan 2, still '20.
Yesterday we had a day off. Except that in the morning we had a visit from a delegation of students repreentatives of the Students Unions. They and not the officials invited us here. There were four boys and three girls, the latter all from the Anglo-Chinese School, methodist. They all spoke some english, the girls very good, an[d] they were very chatty, more conversational and less selfconscious Lucy says than any of the Peking girls she has seen. It was quite extraordinary—this joint delegation. Suh Hu says that the afternoon before he visite[d] the Union headquarters ad found in each room a committee composed of boys and girls working togther, quite free from any consciousness, a sight which he says is the most encouraging he has yet seen in China. Only here and in Shanghia are such things possible. Why we also heard so much about Turkish women and so little about Chinese orietnalism, unless it was the sightseer's eye for the picturesque veil.
Yesterday morning's paper said that the Minister of Interior Chancellor Tsai had resigned, owing to the failure of mediation negotiations. Suh Hu [Hu Shi] came in late last night, had spent part of the day with others hunting for Tsai who had disappeared from Peking, presumably to Tientsin; that all the principals of the schools from elementary up had resigned and that educational chaos reigned supreme; also that one reason General Wu, the government mediator offered for the teachers going back to work was the impending attempt to restore the monarchy. Hu was quite excited last night, as yesterday was the day set according to rumors, but this morning paper hadnt a word about it. Just what is going to happen to my lectures now I dont know, but I hope some way will be foun[d] to resume them without waiting an endless time which will mean I will never finish and earn my salary in Peking.
This afternoon mamma and I both speak at the same meeting, which is also the first time for that arrangment. It is the difference between the younger generation and the old. At a recent meeting, Xn, in Shanghai, the Chinese proposed and amalgamation of the Y M C A and Y W C A—it would be interesting to see the fluttering in the male dovecotes. But it is one of many signs that the younger generation of Chinese is ready to go further than the alleged liberal westerner, who has his obssessions as to what the Chinese will and will not stand for—to say nothing of their own inner feelings as to what they will stand for themselves. In the past from combined timidty and politeness the Chinese have hesitated to tell their Xn confreres just what they thought and wanted, but the nationalist feeling is grwoing so rapidly that that wont last much longer. Its only fair to say that some of the missionary element would gladly abdicate when they saw the Chinese disposed to take || responsibility, while the Y M C A is already organized with the Chinese in at least nominal control, and with all the facilities for actual control.
Peking Home, Jan 4
When we get back here and find all the rented things gone and our own here and to be chased after, we realize that few millionaires have naything on us in the way of furnsihed houses, what with our palce at 2880, our country mansion at Huntington, our spring residence on Russian Hill and our winter resort here. Whether mama will be able to find another to furnish before we leave China I dont know…
Dad

Letter from Lucy Dewey to Dewey children
135 Morrison Street, Sunday, Jan 4 [1920]
Dear Folks.
Its been perfect ages since I have written but I have inumerable alibis. In the first place when we first decided to furnish the flat ourselves I went with Mamma to furniture street to look for stuff. I got so cold running around their old stone houses that I was laid up in bed with tonsilitis for two days. I rose from my bed of pain to go to Mrs Hortons dance and it quite cured me. Also I had a very nice time. There are a lot of Italian officers here arranging for D'Annunzios Rome Tokyo flight. They are like Italian officers every where and most amusing. Also Admiral Gleaves and all his staff were there, much gold lace and uniforms.
The next day was spent in frantice packing, moving, and buying furniture and a tea dance in the afternoon by way of a rest. I see Dad has writ[t]en numerous letters and told about Shantung. We had an interesting time there and in some ways quite entertaining. You should have seen us chummig with the savage Ma Liang. I sat next him at the Governors dinner and as he is a Mohamedan he couldnt eat anything. I couldnt converse with him very well and neither did the man on the other side so he amused himself by brushing his mustache with a cunning little brush he carries in his pocket. He has the best manners and seems the most amiable of any of those people we have met except Tuchun Yen of Shansi. He may put his old family doctor to death by torture but he doesnt act that way in public.
We stopped for three days in Tientsin, got there New Years Eve with our trunk delayed and so were exiled to a remote place outside the dining room for diner. There are street cars in Tientsin and we were so thrilled by the sight that we promptly jumped on one and rode. There isnt a great deal there in the way of sights, just the concessions, like any small town, and the Chinese city.
It was very interesting, the first place in China where the Chinese women get out-and-do things that Ive seen. They say Tientsin and Shanghai are the only two. They men and women students work together on committees and in a small audience of about thirty that Suh Hu [Hu Shi] spoke to they sat together. The girls that came to receive us were the nicest and most interesting that I have met in China. They can talk, which is a great relief, start conversations of their own accord and not have things pulled out by questions all the time. And they talk about everything that a girl at home talks about. Two of them, cunning little mites of things, are going to America next year to prepare for college and are planning to go about the same time we do, so we may come home with them under our arms. I hope so.
Poor Mamma has been out all morning buying dishpans and things so we can have something to eat without sponging off the neighbors.
6.30 p.m.
Mother and I have been in the house about half an hour now after a wild afternoon hunting for a parlor table and soem cooking things. The rickshaw man has just come up to say that the soldiees are looting out un the Chinese city and all the shops are shut. We seem to have got in just in time that is where we were. It all looked peaceful enough then. There have been rumors of an attempt to restore the boy emperor and we are wondering if this is the first act. I have just been out in the kitchen to tell the boy to go down and see what he could find out from the people in the street and the cook informed me Liu go down side. So as soon as Liu go top side again I shall continue this and tell you what he has found out.
Ha says that last night the soldiers roobeed a Chinese bank and tonight are robbing more. They Belong to Feng Kuo Chang an ec-president now deceased. He died a few days ago and omitted to pay the soldiers before so doing. They haveny been paid in four months and now apparently they are collecting. This afternoon when Mamma and I first went out we passed a lot of soldiers taking a huge gun along the streets and this explains it. There may be no end of trouble now as the whole administration is in a mess from the teachers strike. Chancellor Tsai has resigned and disappeared again and it looks as tho the whole educational system had gone kersmash. Now the rest may go too. The soldiers are recruited f[r]om the brigands and the brigands from the ex-soldiers, so there isnt much choice. On the whole the soldiers behave pretty well when they are paid, but nobody in China has been paid now for several months. This mornings paper had an awful story about the soldiers in Tsinanfu, which we seem to have left just in time. There they enteres a theater where the studenys were celebrating New Years with some plays they gave themselves. The soldiers boke in and attacked the students, beating them down, two were injured so badly that they may die. The girls were attacked and robbed, some even of their clothes. The military police finally came to the rescue and drove out the police and recovered some of the stolen property. The city is under martial law, I never saw so many soldiers standind around with their bayonets fixed in my life nd hope I never do again. It gives you creepy feeling, not at all pleasant to come on a large bunch of bayonets every tim[e] you go round a corner.
Well, I must finish this and get it off or it will hang on forever. We found a lot of mail waiting for us and it sure was welcome. Loads of love to all and I hope Elizabeth had a nice birthday.
[Lucy Dewey]

Letter from John Dewey to John Jacob Coss
135 Morrison St Peking Jan 13 '20
Dear Coss,
Our letters crossed each other, so I hope mine, with the statement of courses, reached you in season. The day it yours came one of my Chinese friends brought up the question of my staying another year I am anxious to get home, and yet age has crept upon me enough so that the ease of living here, to say nothing of more intrinsic values, is tempting, especially as letters are full of the high cost of living, the difficulty of getting "help" etc. In a small and modest flat, with a family of three we have three servants for less than one would cost at home in wages—and they feed themselves, except of course for sqweeze on us, and we pay the highest going rate. Doubtless one smart man could do the work of these three, but the large population of China has to be kept alive and going somehow, and everything in China, tempo of work and the sobiability of numbers as well as the rate of pay is adapted to that fact. Well I started out to say that the question of our remaning another year had been tentatively raised. It will take a month or six weeks to have anything definite come of the suggestion, but Im mentioning it now so if a cablegram comes from me you will have some word. It has been a worth while experience, not so much for things specifically learned as for the entirely new perspective and horizon in general. Nothing western looks quite the same an[y] more, and this is as near to a renewal of youth as can be hoped for in this world. From this distance our sectrain differences in philosoph[y] look as technical and unreal as our similar differences in religion. Whether I am accomplishing naything as well as getting a great deal is another matter. China remains a massive blank and impenetrable wall, when it comes to judgment. My guess is that what is accomplished is mostly by way of "giving face" to the younger liberal element. Its a sort of outside reinforcement in spite of its vagueness. Other times I think Chinese civilization is so thick and selfcentred that no foreign influence presented via a foreigner even scratches the surface. However some of the younger Chinese, among whom our Suh Hu [Hu Shi] is a marked leader are keeping things stirred up. At present the war is on on the old family system, with a demand for the emancipation of women—which doesn[t] mean the vote which amounts to nothing as yet for the men, but breaking down the truly Oriental seclusion and subjection. Most foreigners her[e] are more conservative here than the liberal Chinese. A large part of the missionary elecent, especially the older ones, have compensated for their temerity in introducing new religious ideas and rites by outdoing the Chinese in social conservatism. in other lines. Some of the younger men are marked excpetions. The Rockefeller medical foundation here has coeducation and its head Roger Greene (not a physician but administrative head) is urging coeducation on all the missionary colleges.
I was much interested in your college news which is the first Ive had, especially of course in the new course which sounds most promising, also oin the salary matter. The younger married men must have been in an awful condition with the hcl[High cost of living]. If there is anything printed about the mental test etc matter I wish you would have it sent me. I hope go out to the Boxer indemnity college once a week, Tsing Hua and can use it there. The "college" has in reality but about a year's college work; many of the men are disconcerted because some American colleges give two and even three years college credit, except in engineering lines where but the one year is given. This is producing internal friction in the institution as the engineering, or rather scientific men, think they are discriminated aginst, not in America but at home. The problem of sending students to America and what to do with they return de[f]inite[?] and exact idea of the problem. I wish [Adam Leroy] Jones could get a meeting of the some of the representative at Chinese students there, especia[l]ly those with a Tsing Hua background, and get their ideas of the problem and of the defects in the present method. Illogically [p]erhaps without a clear idea of the elements of the problem I have come to a conclusion about one element in its solution—that Tsing Hua should become a four year college and send to America a smaller number, but more mature and advanced, for specialed graduate work. One of the great questions is the demand for technical studies at the expense of students getting much real idea of western civilization. Looked at from this end, it wouldnt be a bad idea to have all Chinese students (and Japanese too) required to take your new frsshman course, even the graduate and technical students. This is meant seriously. I dont belive the problem of Oriental students ca[n] be dealt with satisfactorily till some especial arrangements are made for them in spite of its upsetting uniformity of administration. Over here they would probably strike before they would go back into a freshman course, but the losing face element wouldnt be so strong there…
Sincerely yours, John Dewey.

Letter from John Dewey to Albert C. Barnes
135 Morrison St, Peking Jan 15 '20
Dear Barnes,… On account of the intepretation I have to write my articles lecture notes out much more fully than ever before, several a week, and whe[n] I have written home and the articles I contracted for with N R and Asia, I have am more than satiated with writing. Howver that doesnt apply the last few weeks, for Ive been on strike—dont let [A. (Alexander) Mitchell] Palmer know or Ill be deported. The Peking teacher went on strike late in Dec because they were behind in pay three months and were getting paid fifty percent in depreciated notes, worth fifty on the dollar at that. The minister of Education with a truly American fatuity of officials instead of least appearing to sympathize with them rather ridiculed him so they demanded his scalp too. Then he tried to set the students against the teachers and the former then demanded his scalp also. Up to this time many of the teachers had been quite consrvative and opposed to the student movement. Now they are rather solidified. The teachers got this week everything they were after except the dismissal of the minister. That would have broug[ht] the whole cabinet tumbling down. My strike was rather an enforces sympathetic, as I have no grievances at all, but it makes a good story just the same. All countries are alike tho the level differs. Here any liberal sentiment at all, say as much so as the platituudes of the N Y Times on the liberalism of the past that has become orthodox, [pencil comma] is regarded as out and out Bolshevism, I see from the cables that the latest form of propaganda is that Japan must again intervene in Siberia ifn order to prevent the Bolshvising of China. Land is divided here and the farmers are the real country and factory industry is in its infancy. There is as much danger of Bolshevizing China as there is of the farmers of Berks Co turning Bols. But verything goes when it comes to propaganda. The only question left is the depths of human gullibility. If the Japanese try to hold Siberia, it is the beginning of the end in my opinion and there is that [in pencil w. caret] much reason for hoping the propaganda will succeed. There is one danger. Gt Britain and France may promise J something and get tied up to back her. It is disgusting by the way what a pawnbroking business the big nations do over here—making China loans of a few millions dollars conditioned often on her buying something she doesnt want at a big discoun | high rate of interest, and with a view to getting a mortgage on something in the future. Then, while the western powers wouldnt dream of doing such things nearer home where there is publicity, the Chinese naturally conclude this is the general western standard
I was interested in your suggestion about a seminar in esthetics. But I cant rise to my part in it. I have always eschewed esthetics, just why I dont know, but I think it is because I wanted to reserve one region from a somewhat devastating analysis, one part of experience where I didnt think more than I did anything else. And now I have a pretty fixed repulsion agt all esthetic discussion. I feel about it precisely as the average intelligent man feels about all philosophical discussion, including the branches that excite me very much…
I recd a letter the other day asking me to join the Leuage for Oppressed Peoples. Im thinking of writing back and saying I will when they include the U S among the oppressed peoples—its shameful that about the only U S news we get here is raids, deportations, semi-officials lynchings, strikes etc.
China is in many respects the Europe of the 17th century. The rest of the world wont give her two centuries in which to develop in her own way. Meanwhile the Asia of Russia, China and India is a tremendous fact. At bottom the situation is much like two locomotives plunging at each other—the distance between them is great but they are both getting momentum—or rather the smallest one has great momentum and the big one is beginnin[g] to get it. This sounds pessimistic. Meantime, China is a most interesting spot to live in and also, compared with reports of hcl and lack of service in America a delightfully easy one. I wrote somebody the other day it had the nearest effect to a renewal of youth conceivable. It places everythin[g] in a new perspective so nothing looks alike as it did before. The other day we had the opportunity to see some of the best old Chinese paintings still remaining in China, Sung dynasty and in perfect conditions. Sorry you werent along. To my surprise, in the best the technique was so wonderful that it seemed to get ahead of the feeeling. But I think that is because from lack of background and of [in pencil w. caret] sufficiently long acquintance with the pictures, [in pencil w. caret] it is easier to get the technique than the feeling. Howver there is no doubt the Chinese are virtuosos all right, the cultivated ones. Their devotion to handwriting, to characters shows that. Lots of them devote an hour or two a day to it, just making the characters for practise, and it is my impression they regard it as a higher art than painting or anything directly representative in art. For handling of strokes—that word seems better than lines—both in themselves and in spacing, [pencil comma] I dont believe the world has naything finer to show than two or three of these paintings we saw—men whose names I didnt recognize—which is fairly typical of our general provincialism with respect to Asia.
We have engaged passage home for next August. Evelyn is now on her way to Vancouver and will join us in about a month. Please give our regards to Mrs Barnes, and with the same to you,
Sincerely yours, John Dewey

Letter from Alice Chipman Dewey to Evelyn Dewey
Peking Feb 8th [1920] Sunday.
Dearest Evelyn…
Pa and I have just been to an exhibition of Mr Liens pictures. They are said to be the best collection in China, tho not large they are all perfect…
There is nothing to tell you except that we are jumping out of boots now that we have heard from you and shall continue to jump till you get here which will be soon. I wish I could be in the Sontag Hotel when you get there. But the thought of all that travel is enough to take away the taste for a trip just to come right back. Peking weather is delightful again tho colder than at any time before… The students are going to work again tomorrow to keep the govt from shutting up the schools and also to fix the blame on the gvt where it belongs. The govft here is behaving as badly as the Japanese thems[elves] Now this must go if it gets to you on time.
Loads of love till we meet. Mama.

Letter from John Dewey to Dewey children
135 Morrison St Peking Feb 2 11
Dearest children,
We are expecting Ev to arrive here a week from to morrow, so says a telegram we recd from Tokyo; she gets to Seoul in Korea in two days... I feel free to mention the fact that Suh Hu [Hu Shi] asked us about staying over another year, to work on the educational dept of the university. Ev included, because I dont think there is anything in it, tho we havent given any answer yet, waiting for Evs arrival. There is only one good reason for staying and that's on mother's account, that is to say housekeeping. When things are so easy here it looks hard on her to subject her to the strains of the hcl and servants in N Y. But I think personally Ive got about all I can get from a stay here now. Id rather come back and go home by India or Russia a few years from now. Also I want to see the family, and not lose all track of my country—tho Suh Hu [Hu Shi] says I would get deported if I went back now. Fred seemed to be worrying about my connection with the new school, so I wrote them to announce my course there in such a way that it wouldn't seem as if I had given up there Columbia…
We are still waiting to hear what will happen when my work finishes here next month. Presumably I go to the Yangste valley in general and Nanking in particular to lecture, but whether for one month or three I don[t] know. If for one three we shant get south to Foochow and Canton till summer very hot weather, and little time in Japan on our return, earlier tho still hot enough, and have some weeks in Japan to complete our sightseeing there, Nikko etc. When we find out and Ev gets here we shall have to decide what the rest of the family will do when I go to Nanking—they wont want three mos there as it is not exciting. Another thing agt staying over another year is the uncertainty of this situation. Things have been badly broken up, no lectures last two weeks. No actual strike, but no regular classes either. They are meeting everyday to decide upon whether to strike, the more responsible ones trying to prevent it, the hot heads wanting to as a protest agt beating up of students and arests of students, and dissolution of union at demand of J govt; also the pro-oficial spies among them are urging a strike, as the govt would like to have them do it, to close schools, get students out of Peking and give them free hand to open direct negotiations with J about Shntung. The situation was very tense this last week, with the arrests and the police and lmilitary here and in Tinetsin taking the overt action agt the students. Its pretty clear that the first chapter in the movement is now ended, and what will happen next its too much to say. J has felt the boycott very much, and one hand is ready to make some concessions and on the other is forcing the Chinese military party to direct suppression by use of force of the boycott. They have taken Tientsin as the place of for an object lesson, Even if they break it, it wll be a long time before J wholly recovers, The movement toward native production especially in cotton has taken a big leap forward, tho there is great difficulty in importing machinery.
Tomorrow is another of the endless holidays here—this time the anniversary of the abdication of the Manchu dynsaty in 1912—tho it might as well be Lincolns birthday here as there. Thursday has been my Tsing Hua day and all the holidays have thoughtfully come on that day. Ev arrives here on Thursday tho, and Im hoping there will be a holiday next week as the 20th is the New Year day, and many schools have a three day holiday.
Lots of love to you all Dad.