their dress in summer; I have
seen them, when the thermometer was ranging between 80 and 90, wearing
a singlet shirt, waistcoat and coat. The coat may not have been as
thick as that worn in winter, still it was made of serge, wool or some
similarly unsuitable stuff. However hot the weather might be it was
seldom that anyone was to be seen on the street without a coat. No
wonder we frequently hear of deaths from sunstroke or heat, a fatality
almost unknown among the Chinese.[2]

Chinese dress changes with the seasons, varying from the thickest fur
to the lightest gauze. In winter we wear fur or garments lined with
cotton wadding; in spring we don a lighter fur or some other thinner
garment; in summer we use silk, gauze or grass cloth, according to the
weather. Our fashions are set by the weather; not by the arbitrary
decrees of dressmakers and tailors from Peking or elsewhere. The
number of deaths in America and in Europe every year, resulting from
following the fashion must, I fear, be considerable, although of course
no doctor would dare in his death certificate to assign unsuitable
clothing as the cause of the decease of a patient.

Even in the matter of dressing, and in this twentieth century, "might
is right". In the opinion of an impartial observer the dress of man is
queer, and that of woman, uncouth; but as all nations in Europe and
America are wearing the same kind of dress, mighty Conventionality is
extending its influence, so that even some natives of the East have
discarded their national dress in favor of the uglier Western attire.
If the newly adopted dress were, if no better than, at least equal to,
the old one in beauty and comfort, it might be sanctioned for the sake
of uniformity, as suggested in the previous chapter; but when it is
otherwise why should we imitate? Why should the world assume a
depressing monotony of costume? Why should we allow nature's
diversities to disappear? Formerly a Chinese student when returning
from Europe or America at once resumed his national dress, for if he
dared to continue to favor the Western garb he was looked upon as a
"half-foreign devil". Since the establishment of the Chinese Republic
in 1911, this sentiment has entirely changed, and the inelegant foreign
dress is no longer considered fantastic; on the contrary it has become
a fashion, not only in cities where foreigners are numerous, but even
in interior towns and villages where they are seldom seen.