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In the winter of 1919 Somerset Maugham, at the age of 45, undertook a difficult journey the Yangtze River in China. Ever before the astute observer of individuals and places, he composed down his experience and accumulated them into 58 lovely vignettes which were subsequently published a few years later. Nobody is spared his searching intelligence, especially the business managers, salesmen, missionaries, bureaucrats, military representatives and adventurers he encounters. "Overall it made little difference to them in what capital they found themselves, for they have exactly the same things in Constantinople, Berne, Stockholm, and Peking. China fed up them all...they only realized so much about any of it as was necessary to their business." The subject is apropos, as the Europeans treat Chinese civilization only as a record on which their own lives are performed out.
