China's Treaty Ports

Outposts of Western civilization to some, agents of foreign oppression to others, it was in the treaty ports that West forcibly met East. This anthology presents some of the fruits of that encounter. Eric Linklater's Juan struggles to complete a Chinese banquet, One-Arm Sutton wrests the Chungking mint from one warlord for another, W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood disport themselves in a Shanghai bathhouse. Viewpoints are as various as the writers, from Lin Yutang's mordant disdain for the Old China Hand to Kipling's imperialistic. Fiction, letters, verse, and anecdotes combine to dramatically resurrect a unique passage in China's opening to the outside world.