Daisy. Robert Burns is his favourite poet.
Lee Tai. I spent a year at Oxford and another at Harvard. I can express myself in English not without fluency.
George. Let me compliment you on your good sense in retaining your national costume. I think it a pity that the returned students should insist on wearing ugly tweed suits and billycock hats.
Lee Tai. I spent eight years abroad. I brought back with me no more admiration for Western dress than for Western civilization.
George. That is very interesting.
Lee Tai. You are pleased to be sarcastic.
George. And you, I think, are somewhat supercilious. Believe me, the time has passed when the mandarins of your country, in their impenetrable self-conceit, could put up a barrier against the advance of civilization. If you have any love for China you must see that her only chance to take her rightful place in the world is to accept honestly and sincerely the teaching of the West.
Lee Tai. And if in our hearts we despise and detest what you have to teach us? For what reason are you so confident that you are so superior to us that it behooves us to sit humbly at your feet? Have you excelled us in arts or letters? Have our thinkers been less profound than yours? Has our civilization been less elaborate, less complicated, less refined than yours? Why, when you lived in caves and clothed yourselves with skins we were a cultured people. Do you know that we tried an experiment which is unique in the world?
George. [Good-naturedly.] What experiment is that?
Lee Tai. We sought to rule this great people not by force, but by wisdom. And for centuries we succeeded. Then why does the white man despise the yellow? Shall I tell you?