empt to disguise the fact. There was none of that servile deference
one finds among the hotel servants and the rickshaw-boys, or of the
extreme politeness of the upper-class Chinese whom we had met at the
legations and elsewhere. To these people we were nothing but foreigners,
and down at heart foreigners excite nothing but amusement or hostility.
That conservative, gossiping throng of Orientals had a good, firm
opinion of us, and it wasn't complimentary. We were interlopers and
intruders, and had no business in that _pukkah_ Chinese shop. We were
glad to get out and to make our purchases in some kindlier atmosphere.

How can I reconcile this impression with previous ones, of the docility
and servility we had previously encountered? Docility and subserviency
are necessary in dealing with the conquering foreigner, but in such
places and on such occasions when those qualities are not required, we
get an impression of the real feelings of the Chinese. I believe they
feel toward us very much as we should feel toward them, or toward any
other nation that claimed us as a vassal state. For one country to be
under the "influence" of another, for any nation to assert a "benevolent
protectorate" over another, is to engender the hostility of the state so
patronized. Very well, it stands to reason. Foreigners have been patting
China on the head for a long time, and repeated pats don't always
produce a callous; sometimes they produce profound irritation.

This country is so enormous, so chaotic, one is so aware of the
strength underlying its calm, submissive exterior, that one feels that
some day this latent strength will break through and disclose itself.
In trying to describe all these feelings at random, day by day as
they come, I am not trying to sort them out and classify them and
present them in an orderly manner. You must see them with me, and feel
them with me from day to day, and do your own thinking later. That
English boy on the boat coming over to China told us this. We asked
him if he had enjoyed his vacation in Japan.

"Not much," he replied. "I don't care for the Japanese; they don't
compare with the Chinese."

"What's the difference?" I asked.

He pondered a moment.

"I'll sum it up for you like this," he answered. "In Japan they treat
you as an equal; in China they treat you as a superior."

That's it, I believe. Race antagonism all the way through. China is a
conquered country. She doesn't dare show resentme