self-glorious, egotistical, intellectual, supercilious, ignorant,
superstitious, vain and bombastic. In truth,'' he adds, ``so
very remarkable, so contradictory, so incongruous have I found
the American that I hesitate.''[4]


[4] ``As a Chinaman Saw Us,'' pp. 1, 2.


The Chinese are, indeed, very different from western peoples
in some of their customs.


``They mount a horse on the right side instead of the left. The old
men play marbles and fly kites, while children look gravely on. They
shake hands with themselves instead of with each other. What we call
the surname is written first and the other name afterwards. A coffin is a
very acceptable present to a rich parent in good health. In the north
they sail and pull their wheelbarrows in place of merely pushing them.

China is a country where the roads have no carriages and the
ships have no keels; where the needle points to the south, the place of
honour is on the left hand, and the seat of intellect is supposed to lie in the
stomach; where it is rude to take off your hat, and to wear white clothes
is to go into mourning. Can one be astonished to find a literature without
an alphabet and a language without a grammar?''[5]


[5] Temple Bar, quoted in Smith's ``Rex Christus,'' p. 115.