As A Chinaman Saw Us: Passages from His Letters to a Friend at Home

One of the best-known American authors has immortalized the Chinaman in some of his verses. It was some time before I understood the smile which went around when some one in my...

The most remarkable feature of America is the women. Divest your mind of any woman you know in order to prepare yourself to receive my impressions. To begin with, the American w...

The questions I know you will wish answered are, Whether this stupendous aggregation of States is a success? Does it possess advantages beyond those of the Chinese Empire? Does...

Hash--and I do not mean by this word a corruption of hasheesh--is a term indicating in America a food formed of more than one article chopped and cooked together. I was told by...

The average Irishman whom one meets in America, and he is legion, is a very different person from the polished gentleman I have met in Belfast, Dublin, and other cities in Irela...

The American is an interesting, though not always pleasant, study. His perfect equipoise, his independence, his assumption that he is the best product of the best soil in the wo...

I have been a guest at the annual dinner of the ----, one of the leading literary associations in America, and later at a "reception" at the house of ----, where I met some of t...

Thomas J. Geary, the former congressman, is an avowed enemy of the Chinese and the author of the famous Geary bill, but I condone all he has said against us for one profound utt...

I had not been in Washington a month before I received invitations to a "country club golf" tournament, to a "rowing club," to a "pink tea," to a "polo game," to a private "boxi...

Among the most delightful people I have met in America are the army and navy officers, graduates of West Point and Annapolis, well-bred, cultivated men, patriotic, open-hearted,...

At an assembly-room in New York I met a famous American political "boss." Many governors in China do not have the same power and influence. I had letters to him from Senators --...

Many of the great powers believe themselves to be passing through an evolutionary period leading to civic and national perfection. America, or the United States, has already rea...

One finds it difficult to learn the language fluently because of a peculiar second language called "slang," which is in use even among the fashionable classes. I despair of conv...

At a dinner at Manchester in the summer I had as my _vis-à-vis_ a delightful young American, who, among other things, said to me: "It is astonishing to me that so many of your p...

A fundamental idea with the American is to educate children. This is carried to the extent of making it an offense not to send those above a certain age to school, while State o...

It is seldom that I have been complimented in America, but a lady has told me that she envied our "art sense." She said the Chinese are essentially artistic, that the cheapest t...

One feature of American life is so peculiar that I fear I can not present it to you clearly, as there is nothing like it under the sun. I refer to the newspapers. If such an ins...

Among the many topics I have discussed with Americans, our alleged superstitions, or our belief in so-called dragons, genii, ghosts, etc., seem to have made the deepest impressi...