DOI Heft:
No. 172 (July, 1907)
DOI Artikel:Sheldon-Williams, Inglis: Bits of old China
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20775#0142
Bits of Old China
every instinct but one in complete antagonism, the holds the key to the pervading mystery; here and
gulf of time and space is bridged, the inseparable there a thought is written in characters all thinking
relationship vindicated between the craftsman of humanity may read and understand, only to be
the West and the Farthest East, by the perfect unity obscured again in a maze of half-suggestion tangling
of aim, the determination to satisfy to the utmost to utter incomprehensibility, enticing the venture-
the rigorous exactions of a finely developed aesthetic some explorer farther and farther till the search is
sense, indulging its appetite to satiety by the most perforce abandoned, and the baffled mind falls
prodigal expenditure of time and toil, weighing no back on the more obvious attractions, the study of
questions of profit and loss, and unconsciously moods and characters in the half-indifferent, half-
insuring thereby through the centuries the accumu- resentful crowds, and the surface picturesqueness
lating compound interest that accrues to every of everyday sights and happenings in a city-
world - masterpiece done with that single - where modern progress, modern conditions, seem
mindedness of vision that sees in the perfected meaningless terms.
work alone the richest desirable recompense for The national long blue smock in various and
travail of mind. pleasing stages of discolouration glances in and out
Such oases, then, among the swarming hovels among the drab and nondescript garments of the
and alleys of a Chinese city might best be studied multitude; scantily - clad, slender-limbed coolies,
with the consciousness that here is no exclusive with knit and shining muscles and tendons taut as
preserve for the painter's special craft. He may fiddle strings, trundling wheelbarrows loaded with
; ttempt a comment, a diffidently offered side-light merchandise or passengers sitting sideways as in a
on the psychology of a people whose ways have jaunting-car, jolt their vociferous way over ruts and
long puzzled and fascinated the Western mind ; cobblestones; every nook and interstice in the
fortunate if he can register the merest suggestion milling crowd is filled with children, plump and
of the mystic and elusive eloquence that seems to copper-coloured children, and children wizened,
whisper in broken numbers from the deserted yellow and old; the faces of their elders ranging
courts and corridors. He, no more than others, from the smooth, almost feminine, type of soft-
: WEDDING PROCESSION IN THE WALLED CITY, SHANGHAI BY INGLIS SHELDON-WILLIAMS
every instinct but one in complete antagonism, the holds the key to the pervading mystery; here and
gulf of time and space is bridged, the inseparable there a thought is written in characters all thinking
relationship vindicated between the craftsman of humanity may read and understand, only to be
the West and the Farthest East, by the perfect unity obscured again in a maze of half-suggestion tangling
of aim, the determination to satisfy to the utmost to utter incomprehensibility, enticing the venture-
the rigorous exactions of a finely developed aesthetic some explorer farther and farther till the search is
sense, indulging its appetite to satiety by the most perforce abandoned, and the baffled mind falls
prodigal expenditure of time and toil, weighing no back on the more obvious attractions, the study of
questions of profit and loss, and unconsciously moods and characters in the half-indifferent, half-
insuring thereby through the centuries the accumu- resentful crowds, and the surface picturesqueness
lating compound interest that accrues to every of everyday sights and happenings in a city-
world - masterpiece done with that single - where modern progress, modern conditions, seem
mindedness of vision that sees in the perfected meaningless terms.
work alone the richest desirable recompense for The national long blue smock in various and
travail of mind. pleasing stages of discolouration glances in and out
Such oases, then, among the swarming hovels among the drab and nondescript garments of the
and alleys of a Chinese city might best be studied multitude; scantily - clad, slender-limbed coolies,
with the consciousness that here is no exclusive with knit and shining muscles and tendons taut as
preserve for the painter's special craft. He may fiddle strings, trundling wheelbarrows loaded with
; ttempt a comment, a diffidently offered side-light merchandise or passengers sitting sideways as in a
on the psychology of a people whose ways have jaunting-car, jolt their vociferous way over ruts and
long puzzled and fascinated the Western mind ; cobblestones; every nook and interstice in the
fortunate if he can register the merest suggestion milling crowd is filled with children, plump and
of the mystic and elusive eloquence that seems to copper-coloured children, and children wizened,
whisper in broken numbers from the deserted yellow and old; the faces of their elders ranging
courts and corridors. He, no more than others, from the smooth, almost feminine, type of soft-
: WEDDING PROCESSION IN THE WALLED CITY, SHANGHAI BY INGLIS SHELDON-WILLIAMS