Japan made a very pleasant impression on her, and so it was unfortunate that her first sight of China was in the rather drab surroundings of Hongkew:
Shanghai struck me at first as a caricature of Japan. There were the same vertical signs, the same hieroglyphs, over the open-fronted the same lanterns here and Dut haw different it all was.
half-naked children, men and women in blue shirts and trousers with nothing underneath. Many of the men pull rickshaws—the trams in Shanghai are not what they might be. But in a little while the rough paving flouses receded from the road. shot ave way to smooth asphalt; the up into the sky, displaying bright signboards with ' English names on them. A spotlessly clean omnibus fumbled ' past us, and smart cars pulled up at a_sign from the Indian policeman in his white turban. No more blue cotton pants: instead flowpetual exile—not even from Sı chen point of view And—harmony again restored between us—we stepped out of the pleasant, well-kept courtyard into the dirty sireer where beggar women held out their straw fans towards us with urgent guttural supplications.
Two Memories It is unfortunate that the story has to contain an attempt to explain the Japanese position in China, for the glaring inaccuracies in the exposition deprive it of much of it value. However, Shanghai eventually was left for a visit to Nanking and the trend of the political thought of the diary reveals itself again in the comparison between the resting-places of two national leaders:
But the mausoleum in the Red Square of Moscow has this advantage over Sun Yat-sen's grave: it lies in the heart of the city. close to the Kremlin. and thousands daily walk past it Lenin thus continues t remain fresh in living memory: he is there, acces sible to every school child, and the power of love can breathe into those parchment features life, strength. and volition. But the Chinese leader has been banished to the outskirts of the city, to a spot almost inaccessible to pedestrians, a mere "sight" to be "done" by people who can afford to hire a car to take them there. Perhaps that, too, is symbolic cal.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.