to me in this language told me that the French possessed no poetical literature, and he said the reason of this was that the French language was a bastard language; that it was, in fact, a kind of pidgin Latin.  He said when a Frenchman says a girl is ‘beaucoup belle,’ he is using pidgin Latin.  The courtesy due to a host prevented me from suggesting that if a Frenchman said ‘beaucoup belle’ he would be talking pidgin French.

“Another professor said to me that China would soon develop if she adopted a large Imperial ideal, and that in time the Chinese might attain to a great position in the world, such as the English now held.  He said the best means of bringing this about would be to introduce cricket and football into China.  I told him that I thought this was improbable, because if the Chinese play games, they do not care who is the winner; the fun of the game is to us the improvisation of it as opposed to the organisation which appeals to the people here.  Upon which he said that cricket was like a symphony of music.  In a symphony every instrument plays its part in obedience to one central will, not for its individual advantage, but in order to make a beautiful whole.  ’So it is with our games,’ he said, ’every man plays his part not for the sake of personal advantage, but so that his side may win; and thus the citizen is taught to sink his own interests in those of the community.’  I told him the Chinese did not like symphonies, and Western music was intolerable to them for this very reason.  Western musicians seem to us to take a musical idea which is only worthy of a penny whistle (and would be very good indeed if played on a penny whistle!); and they sit down and make a score of it twenty yards broad, and set a hundred highly-trained and highly-paid musicians to play it.  It is the contrast between the tremendous apparatus and waste of energy on one side, and the light and playful character of the business itself on the other which makes me, a Chinaman, as incapable of appreciating your complicated games as I am of appreciating the complicated symphonies of the Germans or the elaborate rules which their students make with regard to the drinking of beer.  We like a man for taking his fun and not missing a joke when he finds it by chance on his way, but we cannot understand his going out of his way to prepare a joke and to make arrangements for having some fun at a certain fixed date.  This is why we consider a wayside song, a tune that is heard wandering in the summer darkness, to be better than twenty concerts.”

“What did that professor say?” I asked.