ARTIST IN CHINA
MY BOY CHANG, by Hope Danby; Victor Gollancz, English price 13/6, HIS is another of these books of feminiscences of life in g strange country, where the quaintness of the servants ("beef steak" written as "befe stank"), and descriptions of festivals and home entertainments are presented pleasantly enough, but from no particular viewpoint other than nostalgia. The scene is Peking, and the period 1925 to the time of the Japanese occupation of the city during the Second World War. The author made her home in an old palace gate-house. An artist, she wanted to be free of domestic overseeing, and her Chinese servant, Chang, rose to be the pivot of her establishment as her Number One Boy. Anecdotes about Chang and his family and other seryants are interspersed with loving descriptions
of Peking’s buildings and gardens, and the Chinese people’s reverence for them. To be an artist in China, Mrs. Danby found, was to win immediate respect. She recalls how once, when on a painting expedition near Peking during the civil war, she was accosted by a band of drunken soldiers. They started looting her possessions, but when they discovered she was an aftist they bowed
and let her pass.
C.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 886, 27 July 1956, Page 13
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204ARTIST IN CHINA New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 886, 27 July 1956, Page 13
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