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1、A PASSPORT TO CHINABeing the Tale of Her Long and Friendly Sojourning amongst a Strangely Interesting PeopleBY LUCY SOOTHILLWITH A FOREWORD BY HER DAUGHTERLADY HOSIE16 ILLUSTRATIONSHODDER AND STOUGHTON LIMITED LONDONWARWICK SQUARE, E.C.4MCMXXXIFOREWORD BY HER DAUGHTER, LADY HOSIEMy first experience
2、of China was a Riot: my last a Revolution. Was living in China worthwhile? Well worthwhile. So writes my mother in the final chapter of this book.In the Three Character Classics, which Chinese schoolchildren used to learn by heart, is a famous story of a virtuous boy whose old parents longed to eat
3、fish. The season being winter, he lay upon the ice, melted it with his bodys warmth, and caught the fish! Never have I attained such heights of filial piety. Seeing, however, that my father has twice written introductions for books of mine, is it not right that I should now perform a similar office
4、for my mother?Indeed, it is only the payment of a debt that I should write. Was it not my mother who, after I went back to China as a grown-up young lady fresh from school, set pen and paper before me my first entrancing China New Year? Outside our haven of the White House in that Chinese city fire-
5、crackers exploded all down Tilemarket Street. In and out of the room she passed, busy with Chinese friends and with the inter-change of mandarin oranges and red peppers, dyed eggs and smoked ducks, sweet persimmons and paper-white narcissi-or water-fairy flowers. On one of her incursions she found m
6、e sighing, confounded by that stumbling-block of the incipient author-the first sentence. Then begin with the second! quoth she gaily: advice which seemed inspired, and for which I can never be sufficiently grateful. In truth, she has been our family critic and help all along. A great reader herself
7、, she brought a cultivated taste and a discriminating penetration which, though mingled with natural kindness, demanded difficult achievements of us. Lucidity in literature was her especial requirement and her search for the exact word was unremitting. The result, seasoned. with her spicy sense of h
8、umour, will be found in these, her own lively and living pages, with their theme of high endeavour founded on deep spiritual experience.I once wrote in a book thusA lady with white hair, luminous hazel eyes under arching eyebrows, and an expression of taking vivid interest in everything she saw, sto
9、od waiting outside Wing Ons door.It was flattering that my mothers friends at once recognized her. In fact, they used to invite me to put her doings into all my books, quoting in particular the time when she sallied out to save the Lo familys silver hoard, carrying a revolver in a small red satin ba
10、g worked in blue forget-me-nots!But I have mind-pictures further back than that: of a dark-haired hostess making life, even in an out-of-the-way Chinese Treaty Pod, seem vital and enriching. I see her, walking with the hill-born womans springing gait over the glens and dales of South China, darting
11、eagerly aside to pluck ferns, azaleas, roses. Or later, in North China, riding in more sedate middle-age on the fattest white horse ever seen roiling a broad back, which she flicked with innocuous whip. He grunted for breath as he responded to her incorrigible spirit of inquiry; scrambling safely wi
12、th her in the precipitous loess along goat-tracks which alarmed me. I see her again, poring over intricate embroidery patterns for the benefit of her poorer Chinese women friends or lingering to correct a little Chinese girls first essay, on a slate, the child in her variegated tunic halting between
13、 awe and affection at her knee.During the European War, my mother and father led bands of young Chinese interpreters, ten at a time, about London, to behold its marvels. Lately we came upon poems written by them in acknowledgment saying how she had taken them upon the rainbow buses flashing between
14、the houses, and the moving glow-worms of the underground trains deep under the earth. When settling down in England, she was happy to be surrounded by Chinese objects and colours, the very woof and web of her life. Her natural background seemed blue-and-grey Peking Garrets, and temple tapestries wit
15、h their swirling dragons, a cabinet from Shansi with painted panels and brass hinges, anti the carved blackwood chairs which she, as a good housekeeper, has often herself polished.No Oriental Woman without a Name she! Her name, Lucy, is as pleasing as in English when transliterated into the Chinese
16、language-spoken by her with such purity. Lu-Hsi, it runs: and it means, very aptly, Brightness-upon-the-Way. What could be more suitable for one so starry, so candid, so lovely-whose life has been spent in carrying the LightDOROTHEA HOSIE.So they have sent me out another youngster to die, said the Veteran in our Service when he met the pale-faced, black-haired youth of two-and-twenty who stepped eagerly off the tender at Shanghai in t
