The Chinese will not fight, and I sneer at him; he abhors me
because I do. I ridicule his manner of dress; he thinks mine grossly
indecent. I consider his flat nose and the plaited hair and shaven skull
as heathenish; but the Chinese, eating away with his to me ridiculous
chopsticks, looks out from his quick, almond-shaped eyes and considers
me still a foreign devil, although he is too cunning to tell me. His
opinions of me are founded upon the narrow grounds of vanity and
egotism; mine, although I do not admit it even to myself, from something
very much akin thereto.[AA]
I have been looked upon in far-away outposts of the Chinese Empire where
foreigners are still unknown, as an example of those human monstrosities
which come from the West, a creature of a very low order of the human
species, with a form and face uncouth, with language a hopeless jargon,
and with manners unbearably rude and obnoxious. Not that _I_ personally
answer accurately to this description, reader, any more than you would,
but because I happen to be among a people who, as far back as Chinese
opinion of foreigners can be traced, have considered themselves of a
morality and intellectuality superior to yours and mine.
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