The Project Gutenberg EBook of As A Chinaman Saw Us, by Anonymous

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Title: As A Chinaman Saw Us
Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home

Author: Anonymous

Editor: Henry Pearson Gratton

Release Date: October 2, 2007 [EBook #22831]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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|In this text the breve has been represented with |
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|[ua] [ue] [uo]. |
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[Illustration: A CHINESE BOOK COVER DECORATION

Made when the Anglo-Saxon people were living in caves]

AS A CHINAMAN

SAW US

PASSAGES FROM HIS LETTERS
TO A FRIEND AT HOME

[Illustration: Publisher's logo]

NEW YORK AND LONDON
APPLETON AND COMPANY
1916

COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

PREFACE

Since the publication in 1832 of that classic of cynicism, The Domestic
Manners of the Americans, by Mrs. Trollope, perhaps nothing has appeared
that is more caustic or amusing in its treatment of America and the
Americans than the following passages from the letters of a cultivated
and educated Chinaman. The selections have been made from a series of
letters covering a decade spent in America, and were addressed to a
friend in China who had seen few foreigners. The writer was graduated
from a well-known college, after he had attended an English school, and
later took special studies at a German university. Americans have been
informed of the impressions they make on the French, English, and other
people, but doubtless this is the first unreserved and weighty
expression of opinion on a multiplicity of American topics by a Chinaman
of cultivation and grasp