The problem with Chinamen

In 1928, L. Ron Hubbard visited a number of places along the north-eastern seaboard of China, a country convulsed by continual civil war between Nationalists, Communists, warlords, bandits and foreign powers such as Japan, Britain and Germany. His journal contains some interesting illustrations of the practical effect which the political turmoil was having on the Chinese people. Not that Ron had any sympathy for the unfortunate Chinese; the following fragments from his journal illustrate his contemptuous and dismissive attitude. He must surely have seemed to the Chinese to have been yet another overbearing gweilo:

As a Chinaman can not live up to a thing, he always drags it down. Hence Tsingtau is rather dirty in spite of Japan's efforts to clean things up.

They smell of all the baths they didnt take. The trouble with China is, there are too many chinks here.

Last updated 6 Dec 1996