Our Chinese Acquaintance
We met him in the runway called a street, between the
warrens known as houses.
He looked still the same, but his French-cut tweeds,
his continental hat, and small round glasses were
alien here.
About him we felt a troubled uncertainty.
He greeted us gladly. "It is good," he said in his
soft French, "to see my foreign friends again.
You find our city dirty I am sure. On every stone
dirt grows in China.
How the people crowd! The street is choked. No
jee ba! Go away, curious ones! The ladies
cannot breathe….
No, my people are not clean. They do not understand,
I think. In Belgium where I studied—
… Yes, I was studying in Bruges, studying
Christianity, when the great war came.
We, you know, love peace. I could not see….
"So I came home.
"But China is very dirty…. Our priests are rascals,
and the people … I do not know.
"Is there, perhaps, a true religion somewhere? The
Greeks died too—and they were clean."
Behind his glasses his slant eyes were troubled.
"I do not know," he said.
Wusih
The Spirit Wall
It stands before my neighbor's door, between him and
the vegetable garden and the open toilet pots and
the dirty canal.
Not that he wishes to hide these things.
On the contrary, he misses the view.
But China, you must understand, is full of evil spirits,
demons of the earth and air, foxes and shui-mang
devils, and only the priest knows what beside.
A man may at any moment be bewitched, so that his
silk-worms die and his children go blind and he
gets the devil-sickness.
So living is difficult.
But Heaven has providentially decreed that these evil
spirits can travel only in a straight line. Around
a corner their power evaporates.
So my neighbor has built a wall that runs before his
door. Windows of course he has none.
He cannot see his vegetable garden, and his toilet pots,
and the dirty canal.
But he is quite safe!
Wusih