The Synthesis of Colossal, Paradoxical China Reactions on an Oriental Background Roper Labonne, erstwhile visitor in Shanghai, tin jotting down a number of impremions of the Parle of the Orient, folia to consider many mottvations appended from a resume appearing in the May number of the "Magazine Digest," condensed from the "Revue de Paris"
Shanghai is a synthesis of China, the paradoxical, the discordant, the colossal; China,' eternally young despite her confusion, her decrepitude and anachronisms, but confident, nevertheless, in her immense static power to digest the present crisis as She has often before absorbed con-'Querers, people, ideas, religions and sris, But she has many other faces: English, Russian, French and Japanese, all Tending' individuality to the Queen of the Paci.
At her best Shanghai gives a replica of Yankee cities and in this pretence she piously copies what She sees of it from her side of the ocean: crude advertising, continuous movie shows, Blatant illuminations, cosmopolitanism, taxi-girls, gangsters, bluff, puritanism, fashions and cook-Ing—all more or less distorted by the surrounding milieu and flavoured with a Chinese sauce.
Four thousand Americans, no more, inhabit Shanghai but they make enough noise for a million. They give it its tone and the city proper Belongs to them.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.