Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 144, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 June 1918 — AS WESTERNER SEES CHINA [ARTICLE]

AS WESTERNER SEES CHINA

Dust and ruined beauty. Ridiculous whimsicality of embroideries. The shrewd, humorous faces of the women. Loud voices and everywhere the latent mob. The free walk of the men in their dark blue clothes. Confucius, Lao-tze and Buddha, with wagging sleeves, in a dance before the applauding old men of heaven. That greatest of all dragons, the Great Wall, colling over the whole ranges, the work, and tomb, of millions. Temples created as If by magic, with the imperial gold tiles falling from the roofs, like leaves from an autumn elm. Age, decrepitude, tradition, non-lndi-vidualism, bursting like a scarlet firecracker into a shower of lyrics.—Elizabeth J. Coatsworth, in “Asia,”