Who are the True Chinese?

"There is a class of foreigners in China whose idea of Chinese culture is derived entirely from their contact with the so-called high-class Chinese. These latter are distinguished from the ordinary Chinese by the fact that, as a rule they can converse with the foreigners in their own tongue, and that furthermore, since they bathe ordinarily three or four times a week, they do not smell nearly so bad as the rickshaw coolies. As likely as not, these high-class Chinese are returned students from abroad and are therefore most vociferous in their praise of western civilization. At the same time, however, they never fail to make the point clear that the traditional Chinese civilization has also a good deal that is of permanent value to commend itself not only to the Chinese but to the Europeans and Americans as well. In their dealings with the foreigners, they generally make an effort to live up to the reputation of the Chinese gentlemen - that is to say, they always try to be polite and courteous, sometimes even to a fault.

Although these Brahmins of Chinese society are in the habit of holding themselves aloof from the pestilential masses, they nevertheless are not totally devoid of sympathetic feelings toward the latter. At any rate, they have no objections against the lower classes of people in the abstract, in spite of the fact that they may look down upon them in the concrete. When they are angry with the rickshaw coolies, for instance, they would call them them Chu Lo [豬玀] - pigs - or even kick them from behind. But when they are writing a learned dissertation on the Standard of Living of the Rickshaw Coolies in Shanghai, they would sentimentally refer to these poor fellows as “our hard-working and much oppressed brethren and comrades”… . Who are the true Chinese? That is our question. If we may trust Bertrand Russell and Mrs. Pearl Buck, they are certainly not to be found drinking Martini cocktails in the drawing rooms of the Shanghai élite."


T.K. Chuan, 'Who are the True Chinese?', The China Critic, July 20, 1933, p. 716.