SOURCE: Quennell, Peter. “China.” New Statesman and Nation 11, no. 264 (14 March 1936): 403, 406.

In the following review, Quennell finds My Country and My People to be a lively, readable, and amusing book which is designed for the general reader.

From several points of view My Country and My People, Mr. Lin Yutang's contribution to the study of China and the Chinese temperament, is a remarkable and interesting book. For one thing, if we discount a certain naivety and redundancy, due to the fact that the author is employing a foreign language, it is unusually well written. Secondly, although Mr. Lin Yutang has been educated in Europe, the attitude he adopts is neither the defensive-aggressive nor the mystic-apologetic; he does not kowtow to Western “civilisation” and at the same time assert that the West is responsible for all the ills from which China is at present suffering, nor does he strike a...