Profiles from China | Page 2

glow
faintly with a
reflected light.
For their eyes are on his face.
It alone is alive, is
vibrant, moving bronze under a sun
of bronze.
The taut skin, like polished metal, shines along his
cheek and jaw. His eyes cut upward from a slender
nose, and his
quick mouth moves sharply out
and in.
Artful are the gestures of his mouth, elaborate and

full of guile. When he draws back the bow of
his lips his face is like a
mask of lacquer, set with
teeth of pearl, fantastic, terrible....
What
strange tale lives in the gestures of his mouth?
Does a fox-maiden,
bewitching, tiny-footed, lure a
scholar to his doom? Is an unfilial son tortured
of devils? Or does a
decadent queen sport with
her eunuchs?
I cannot tell.
The faces of the people are wooden; only their eyes
burn dully with a reflected light.
I shall never know.
I am alien ...
alien.
Nanking
The Well
The Second Well under Heaven lies at the foot of the
Sacred Mountain.
Perhaps the well is sacred because it is clean; or
perhaps
it is clean because it is sacred.
I cannot tell.
At the bottom of the well are coppers and coins with
square holes in them, thrown thither by devout
hands. They gleam
enticingly through the shallow
water.
The people crowd about the
well, leaning brown covetous
faces above the coping as my copper falls
slantwise to rest.
Perhaps it will bring me luck, who knows?
It is a very sacred well.

Or perhaps, when it is quite dark, someone who is
hungry....
Then the luck will be his!

The Village of the Mud Idols
The Abandoned God
In the cold darkness of eternity he sits, this god who
has grown old.
His rounded eyes are open on the whir of time, but
man who made him has forgotten him.
Blue is his graven face, and silver-blue his hands. His
eyebrows and his silken beard are scarlet as the
hope that built him.

The yellow dragon on his rotting robes still rears itself
majestically, but thread by thread time eats its
scales away,
And
man who made him has forgotten him.
For incense now he breathes the homely smell of rice
and tea, stored in his anteroom;
For priests the busy spiders hang
festoons between his
fingers, and nest them in his yellow nails.
And darkness broods upon
him.
The veil that hid the awful face of godhead from the
too impetuous gaze of worshippers serves in decay
to hide from deity
the living face of man,
So god no longer sees his maker.
Let us drop the curtain and be gone!
I am old too, here in eternity.
Pa-tze-kiao
The Bridge
The Bridge of the Eight Scholars spans the canal narrowly.
On the
gray stone of its arch are carvings in low relief,

and the curve of its span is pleasing to the eye.
No one knows how
old is the Bridge of the Eight
Scholars.
In our house-boat we pass under it. The boatman
with the rat-like face twists the long broken-backed
oar, churning the
yellow water, and we creep forward
steadily.
On the bridge the
village is assembled. Foreign devils
are a rarity.
The gold-brown faces are not unfriendly, merely curious.
They peer in rows over the rail with grunts
of nasal interest.

Tentatively, experimentally, as we pass they spit down
upon us. Not that they wish us ill, but it can be
done, and the
temptation is too great.
We retire into the house-boat.
The roof scrapes as we pass under the
span of the
Bridge of the Eight Scholars.
Pa-tze-kiao
The Shop
(The articles sold here are to be burned at funerals for
the use of the
dead in the spirit world.)
The master of the shop is a pious man, in good odor
with the priests.
He is old and honorable and his white moustache
droops below his chin.
Mencius, I think, looked so.
The shop behind him is a mimic world, a world

of pieties and shams--the valley of remembrance--the
dwelling place
of the unquiet dead.
Here on his shelves are ranged the splendor and
the
panoply of life, silk in smooth gleaming rolls, silver
in ingots, carving
and embroidery and jade, a
scarlet bearer-chair, a pipe for opium....

Whatever life has need of, it is here,
And it is for the dead.
Whatever life has need of, it is here. Yet it is here in
sham, in effigy, in tortured compromise.
The dead have need of silk.
Yet silk is dear, and
there are living backs to clothe.
The rolls are paper.... Do not look too
close.
The dead I think will understand.
The carvings, too, the bearer-chair,
the jade--yes,
they are paper; and the shining ingots, they are
tinsel.
Yet they are
made with skill and loving care!
And if the priest knows--surely he
must know!--
when they are burned they'll serve the dead as
well as verities.
So
living mouths can feed.
The master of the shop is a pious man. He has attained
much honor and his white moustache droops
below his chin.
"Such
an one" he says "I burned for my own father.
And such