ABSTRACT
EVERY now and then we are visited in Shanghaiby an export manager, usually a new one, who appears to be spending his company's money on an expensive trip around the world for the sole purpose of discovering how many points of superiority he and others of his nationality enjoy over the people of the country he is visiting. This is an old subject with those ofus who live in China. We have argued about it, and threshed it all out from several national angles so many times that we have entirely exhausted its conversational possibilities. Most of us have lived here so long that the ricksha coolies have given us nicknames, so we can, in a way, qualify as experts on questions of Anglo-Saxon superiority and the shortcomings of the Oriental. It is extremely irritating to an expert in any line to have to listen to ex cathedra opinions of a man who doesn't know what he is talking about, no matter whether the subject be an old or a new one, and the visitor to China who insists
on bringing up comparisons with life as it is lived in the old home town causes us more mental suffering than any other bore ,ve have to endure. Local opinion is rather evenly divided as to whether Englishmen or Americans are the worst, but all agree that most residents of California are in a class by themselves.
