A Realist on China

This book, although its quality is uneven, is worth all the other modern books about China put together. There • are places where the emphasis is wrong, passages where the writing is woolly, but on the whole the treatment is incisive, dispassionate, and above all honest. After all the nonsense written about China by foreigners, after all the special pleading of the Chinese intelligentsia, Mr. Lin Yutang's method of explaining China comes as a welcome relief. He does not apologise ; he makes no use of statistie3 ; he thumps no tub and grinds no axe ; he simply tries to show what the Chinese are really like, as a people and as individuals. He succeeds as com- pletely, I believe, as anyone can hope to succeed.

That he is the first of his countrymen to write a good hook about China is less surprising than that any of his countrymen should have written a book about China at all. There is still, as Mr. Lin points out, no decent biography available of Sun Yat-sen, though he died a decade ago ; the world's greatest opportunists fight shy of opportunities involving sustained intellectual exertion. There is today a lack of energy about the race which has always considered energy ridiculous.

Mr. Lin is widely read and widely travelled ; he knows the world and draws a picture of his own country in the light of his knowledge of others. For instance :

" Apart from the English, few nations have laid such stress on ' character' in their ideal of education and manhood as the Chinese ". . . . " But while the English word ' character' suggests strength, courage, ' guts,' and looking merely glum in moments of anger or disappointment, the Chinese word for ' character' brings to us the vision of a mature man of mellow temperament, retaining an equanimity of mind in all circumstances, with a complete under- standing not only of himself but of his fellow-men."

In other words, we respect men who can get things done ;

the Chinese respect men who understand the futility of doing anything and are not saddened by it.

It is impossible, in a review, to do more than hint at the wisdom and common sense which make Mr. Lin so well worth reading to anyone who takes the slightest interest in human nature. He analyses with brilliance the fundamental traits of the Chinese character—its mellowness, its patience, its indifference (" our instinct of self-preservation tells us that indifference is our best constitutional guarantee for personal liberty "), "old roguery," pacificisrn (" to the Chinese, the Versailles Treaty is not only unfair, it is merely vulgar . . . Ireland is now at peace because the Irish fought hard, and we-

are, still fighting today because we do not fight hard enough"), contentment (" a strong determination to get the best out of

life, a keen desire to enjoy what one has, and no regrets if one fails ; this is the secret of the Chinese genius for con- tentment"), humour ("humour, above everything else, is ruining China"), and conservatism (" I feel the racial tradition is so strong that its fundamental pattern of life will always

remain. Even if . . . a communistic regime should come, the old tradition . . . will break Communism and change it beyond recognition").- He is not less illuminating on the subject of the Chinese Mind. Their Whole conception of character is based on

" the supremacy of the mind over material surroundings," and they therefore respect the scholar, not because his know- ledge is great, but because his education " increases his practical wisdom, his knowledge of world affairs, and his judgement in times of crisis." He emphasises the femininity of the Chinese mind and traces its " lack of analytic thinking " and its " dislike of abstract terms " to the use of a language whose economy and imagery keep thought " always on the periphery of the visible world." " To say, ' How could I perceive his inner mental processes ? ' is not so intelligible as ' How could I know what is going on in his mind ? ' and this in turn is decidedly less effective than the Chinese ' Am I a tape-worm in his belly ? ' " The Chinese " have never developed a science of grammar, and their mathematics and astronomical. knowledge have all

been imported " ; the scientific method involves an amount of drudgery which is repugnant to them and which, by their

essentially humanist standards, is incommensurate with the . results achieved. For logic, they. substitute intuition and

common sense ; " reasonableness is placed on a higher level than reason." As for imagination, " Wordsworth is the most Chinese in spirit of all English-poets 21 'because of hii ability to find beauty in the commonplace.

On the family system, which dominates life in China, Mr. Lin is particularly worth hearing. It " results in general kleptomania with an altruistic tinge to it," and yet it has kept China alive ; " they wanted, survival for their families, and they achieved it for their nation."- Again, " it very nearly takes the place of religion by giving man a sense of social survival and family continuity, thus satisfying man's craving for immortality, and through the ancestral worship it makes the sense of immortality_ very vivid." . Of everything—of women, society, politics, literature, and the arts—Mr. Lin writes vividly and well; adducing much knowledge to support and decorate his arguments. He ends on a sad note. " Mencius has said that the greatest sorrow is the death of the heart, and now truly the' heart is dead. The optimism and cheerful idealism of 1926 have given place to the cynicism and dissillusionment of 1934." He blames no one in particular and, being Chinese, prescribes no specific and immediate remedies. He concludes : " I ask for patience from the friends of China, not from my country- men, for they have too much of it. And I ask for hope from- my countrymen, for to hope is to live."

In writing this book, which is a faithful and' for all its outspokenness a charming picture of the hardest of all countries for the West to understand, Mr. Lin has deserved