Now and then, but too rarely, I came across some word or thought worthy of Lao-Tse himself. I remember very well how my friend who owned the carpets told me once that China was the most moral country in the world. “Time and again,” he said, “we have been assaulted and invaded. We always drive the intruder back, but we never take possession of his country in revenge as European nations do. Believe me, we Chinese are the only people who are above revenge.”
It seemed to me a great observation. And history bore it out. I often asked myself whether it could have anything to do with the strangely hidden sexual life of China. What, after all, has been written about it? The absence of collated evidence was always a surprise to me, but only up until the day when I came to gather together my own memories and impressions. All the world has heard of the Japanese geishas, and I shall have something to say of them when I come to write down my experiences in Japan, but one could search for a lifetime without finding their counterpart in China.
A hundred times I was astonished by the coldness of Chinese girls and women. They would give themselves easily enough, as simply indeed as the Indian of the bazaar, but they did not even pretend to feel any pleasure, much less indulge in any orgasm. I was never more patient with women in my life, using every refinement garnered from a long life of practical love, but I continued to be disappointed, and in every case my fears were justified. That is to say, I came to expect disappointment and I was seldom even slightly surprised. After a few months, I began to regard them with complete indifference. When I picked one out because of her eyes or mouth or complexion, I did so more like a butcher than a lover, so the whole affair lacked that hard gem-like quality of the real act of love.
Of course, I did not know the language, and so the indifference of the women is partly explained. Much of my success in the Anglo-Saxon countries can no doubt be attributed to the fact that I approached the women with the articulateness of a practiced writer. Still, I cannot but regard Chinese women as the coldest of the Children of Eve.
Some of them were beautiful. As a rule, the eyes were funny and there were few faces that would seem to a European ideally lovely, but now and then even that happened. I would suddenly be struck by the superb grace of the facial bone structure, or by the wet fullness of lips. Far more frequently, the figures were perfectly formed even according to our Western standards. The women were for the most part small, but their buttocks would be perfectly spheroid, soft and firm at the same time, and their naked bellies, almost innocent of hair, were smooth and perfect in their warm plasticity. Their breasts were perhaps the most attractive part of them; firm, with almost mauve nipples, held highly on their upper torsos, rather larger than those generally to be found on European women. They were very beautiful. But passion, real sensual feeling, was far more rare than the perfections of physique: Only now and again did I come across it, and then usually in the most unlikely surroundings.
I remember once going home with a pretty woman in Peking. She spoke a few words of English and paralyzed me by asking for her “little present” first. Shrugging my shoulders, I gave her a couple of pounds which seemed to please her greatly and put me even more on my guard. Love that is bought is not only usually passionless, it is also dangerous from the point of view of physical health. I made up my mind to take every precaution and use a sheath on my cock. I followed her into a rather dingy dwelling place, her small steps falling like a passionless refrain, like lead on my enthusiasm. But when we came to the bedroom I was astonished to find a young girl just entering womanhoodperhaps seventeenin the bed.
“My daughter,” said the woman. “She is sleeping and won't know anything. You don't mind?”
“No,” I said, but in fact I did. I made love very mechanically, taking care to use the sheath. I was afraid to vary the motion and intensity of my strokes for fear of waking the angelic girl beside us. I simply fucked her steadily in traditional fashion until my come bubbled from me with the same lack of enthusiasm that I'd demonstrated in performing the act. Then, when my cold little lover fell asleep, I lay awake and stared at the ceiling.
I was sleepless for hours. Then, all of a sudden, I became aware that the daughter was looking at me with wide, smiling eyes. As soon as our glances met, she came nearer to me and, as I stretched out my hand, she put it against her breasts. I caressed them softly. They were not yet fully mature, pale yellow discs of extraordinary beauty on which the nipples were just spreading and darkening. A lust for her mounted in me. Here was beauty indeed! Beauty, young and confiding, loveliness which, being as yet unspoiled, could be molded into mature passion with a little patience and doting love. I took the hardening tips of her breasts in my mouth and caressed them with an almost religious gentleness. She responded by breathing more heavily and by closing her huge, darkly-lashed eyes. I reached out with my arm and drew her slim, young body close. The skin was moist with a light sweat, but smelled pure and clean at the same time. Her lank little thighs closed round one of mine to bring her soft, almost unhaired cunt firmly against the muscles of my leg. Then she directed my mouth against hers and coaxed me to kiss her softly and with growing voluptuousness.
What a find! What an incredible coincidence! To be seduced and disappointed by the mother, only to find oneself an hour later in the sweetly adoring arms of the daughter! I caressed her dry little pussy slit with my fingers until it was wet. My fingers moved smoothly inwards to one of the tightest tunnels it had ever been my good fortune to discover. She whimpered slightly as I eased gently in and out.
Suddenly, she made me desist, got up from the bed, arranged a heap of bedclothes on the floor away from her mother, and drew me down to her. I spent the next half hour kissing her delightful body. A more delicate instrument of love it would have been difficult to find. She responded warmly to every caress and to every exploration of her clitoris. How sweet and touching it was when finally, in response to so much lovemaking, she rolled over on her back and placed my ramrod at her tight little entrance.
Clasping the buttocks underneath, I prepared myself, knowing that in these things hesitation is love's worst enemy. I whispered softly in her ear, words which I'm not sure she understood, but it didn't matter. Without further delay, I thrust forward brutally and embedded my member up to the hilt in her soft flesh. She uttered one long moan, almost like the noise a queen cat makes the first time it knows a male. Then, when she became used to the presence of the foreign body within her cleft and close to the deepest part of her, I eased inwards and outwards slowly, working up to a gradual compact rhythm which she appeared to welcome avidly. I felt her little nails bite deeply into my shoulders as bravely she tried to contain her pain. But as the movement became easier, the grip of her fingers relaxed and her hands, as delicate as butterfly wings, caressed the close-knit sensuality of my buttocks, to urge me to complete her violation. That first violation, if not grasped courageously by a male who is not afraid to assert himself, can be ruined utterly, setting up innumerable complexes in a young soul which only needs to be treated surely and tenderly to open outwards into life like a magnificent flower. Beware of pity, of sentimentality at such times. That has ever been my motto, and I have never found cause to regret it. So I fucked her forcefully, ramming my stiff pole in and out in a paroxysm of lust. A few moments later, this delicious creature was meeting my thrusts like a woman long-accustomed, to the movements of love. I continued to pump her, exploring her cavern with the full length of my cock, slamming my belly against hers until my balls flopped against her smooth upturned buttocks.