Since I discarded the Chinese} garments for the foreign about fourteen years ago, I have been frequent ly asked by people: Why do I wear foreign clothes. This {sa rather embarrassing question, and the inquirers are usually more tha curious. 'They may be good-humoured, cynical. oF contemptuous, but they are Invariably prejudiced, unsympathetic, and. disapproving. Naturally, T have never given them the real' answer, For if T should tel them the truth, they would surely laugh my head off and put me to ridicule. I simply give them a baffling counter-question, and thus manage to turn the the Inquirer is my countryman, 1 would ask him whether he knows that it was once the fashion of our ancients to dress @ lq "barbarian," and advise him to go to Peiping to have a good look at the tomb figures of the Tang Dynasty in the National Museum, If he happens to be a foreigner, I would ask him if he knows that since the Manchu conquest of China in 1644, the Chinese people have never ' worn Chinese clothes except on the stage, and suggest that he should get a book of Chinese history and read it.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.