International studio (32.1907)

Bits of Old China

“ IN THE BIRD MARKET OF THE WALLED CITY, SHANGHAI ”

BY INGLIS SHELDON-WILLI AMS

and things out of sight are finished for love, or
conscience’s sake.

Huge black characters, splashed with easy free-
dom on white and yellow walls, are, one supposes,
the equivalent of our commercial posters; their
meaning is unintelligible and one rests content
with the effect of broadly rendered arabesques.
Except for these advertise-
ments, the unassuming,
almost humble, thorough-
ness of all things—suffi-
cient for the purpose, and
embellished as far as that
purpose will allow, and no
further—stands in monu-
mental contrast with the
cheap and perishable mate-
rials poured by the hundred
gross into the port from
the hold of every mer-
chantman from western
shores, and spreading
through the country that
deteriorating influence
upon the national taste
and traditions that has
already made its mark
in Japan; such things
-must apparently come in
the wake of progress and

the purity of native art
suffers accordingly.

A visit to a Pekin fac-
tory of cloisonne ware
reveals signs of the de-
structive tendency of
foreign influences and in-
novations. Abandoning old
designs the manufacturer,
unable to completely adjust
his art to new and ill-
assimilated ideas, produces
offensive combinations of
Western realism and Ori-
ental convention ; wrought
with the same perfection
of craftsmanship they are
depressing travesties of a
time - honoured art, and
mournful witnesses to an
overreaching commercial-
ism.

Again, the fashionable
silk merchant flaunts before
the offended eye twelve-foot pictures of red and
white cows on green fields topped by square yards
of rankest blue—exquisitely woven abominations.
Not till after much pressing will he unfold from
hidden corners those cherished treasures rescued
from the great loot, and stand before you an
artist false to his craft. At Shan-hai-kwan, on the

“DULL TRADE: CHINESE PEDLAR IN THE WALLED CITY, SHANGHAI”

BY INGLIS SHELDON-WILLI AMS

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