“But I know what Professor Kiang would have: there are others like him. They want the Chinese people represented by the little handful of her intellectuals, and they want the vast, rich, somber, joyous Chinese life represented solely by history that is long past, by paintings of the dead, by a literature that is ancient and classic. These are valuable and assuredly a part of Chinese civilization, but they form only the official buttons. For shall the people be counted as nothing, the splendid common people of China, living their tremendous lusty life against the odds of a calamitous nature, a war-torn government, a small, indifferent aristocracy of intellectuals? For truth’s sake I can never agree to it.
“I know from a thousand experiences this attitude which is manifest again in this article by Professor Kiang. I have seen it manifest in cruel acts against the working man, in contempt for the honest, illiterate farmer, in a total neglect of the interests of the proletariat, so that no common people in the world have suffered more at the hands of their own civil, military and intellectual leaders than have the Chinese people. The cleavage between the common people and the intellectuals in China is portentous, a gulf that seems impassable. I have lived with the common people, and for the past fifteen years I have lived among the intellectuals, and I know whereof I speak.
“Professor Kiang himself exemplifies this attitude of misunderstanding of his people when he speaks so contemptuously of ‘coolies’ and ‘amahs.’ If he understood ‘coolies’ he would know that to them it is a stinging name. ‘Amah,’ also, is merely a term for a servant. In my childhood home our gardener was a farmer whom we all respected, and we were never allowed to call him a ‘coolie,’ nor are my own children allowed to use the word in our home now. Our nurse we never called ‘amah’ but always ‘foster-mother,’ and she taught us nothing but good, and we loved her devotedly and obeyed her as we did our mother. It is true she was a country woman. But if her idea of life was ‘inevitably strange’ and ‘her common knowledge limited’ I never knew it. To me she was my foster-mother. Today in my home my children so love and respect another country woman, whom they also call, not ‘amah’ but by the same old sweet name, for this woman is not a mere servant but our loyal friend and true foster-mother to my children. I can never feel to her as Professor Kiang does.
“The point that some of China’s intellectuals cannot seem to grasp is that they ought to be proud of their common people, that the common people are China’s strength and glory. The time is past now for thinking the West can be deceived into believing that China’s people look like ancestral portraits. Newspapers and travelers tell all about China’s bandits and famines and civil wars. There is no incident in ‘Sons’ which has not been paralleled within my own knowledge in the last fifteen years. The mitigating thing in the whole picture is the quality of the common people, who bear with such noble fortitude the vicissitudes of their times….
“But I have said enough. I will not touch on Professor Kiang’s accusation of obscenity in my books. The narrowest sects of missionaries agree with him, and I suppose this fear of normal sex life is a result of some sort of training. I do not know. Suffice it to say that I have written as I have seen and heard.
“As to whether I am doing China a service or not in my books only time can tell. I have received many letters from people who tell me they have become interested in China for the first time after reading the books, that now Chinese seem human to them, and other like comments. For myself, I have no sense of mission or of doing any service. I write because it is my nature so to do, and I can write only what I know, and I know nothing but China, having always lived there. I have had few friends of my own race, almost none intimate, and so I write about the people I do know. They are the people in China I love best to live among, the everyday people, who care nothing for official buttons.”
Pearl S. Buck
On the following day the New York Times commented on this exchange as follows, on its editorial page, in part:
“Professor Kiang Kang-Hu gave his own case away by his ‘ancestral portrait’ illustration. Though painted when the subject is alive, it is completed posthumously and must be treated with a certain technique. The person represented must be shown in a prescribed posture—‘full face with both ears’—and in ceremonial dress. Certain conventions must be followed — even if they prevent a faithful likeness and violate all rules of perspective and light and shade. In the case of a mandarin the ‘official button’ must be visible. Professor Kiang’s criticism of Mrs. Buck’s pictures of Chinese life is that the conventions have not been observed by her: that China has been painted ‘with a half black and half white face,’ and that the official button is missing.
“Mrs. Buck admits that she has not painted the conventional portrait. She used lights and shades in presenting the Chinese individual as she saw him in her life, both among the common people and the intellectuals. As to accuracy of detail, she is able to furnish abundant evidence from the region of China in which she spent many years from childhood up. Local custom varies so widely in China that no one can lay down a sweeping statement. She verified her localized accounts by reading them to her neighboring Chinese friends. Professor Kiang’s criticism is that she depended too much upon Chinese ‘coolies’ and ‘amahs,’ rather than the ‘handful of intellectuals,’ as she characterized those who speak so contemptuously of the common people, from whom they are separated by a portentous gulf that seems to her impassable.
“To Mrs. Buck they who form the great majority of the population of China are rightly representative of the vast, rich, somber, joyous Chinese life, the splendid common people, living their tremendous lusty life against the odds of a calamitous nature, a war-torn government, a small indifferent aristocracy of intellectuals.
“They are China’s strength and glory, bearing with notable fortitude the vicissitudes of their times. One does not have to read old texts, as Professor Kiang deems necessary, in order to understand and interpret the China of today. No conventionalized painting of the life there can persuade the West that the people really look like the ancestral portraits which Professor Kiang would have us accept as truly representative of the Celestial Empire. Mrs. Buck has enabled us to witness and appreciate the patience, frugality, industry and indomitable good humor of a suffering people, whose homes the governing intellectuals would hide from the sight of the world.”
To return to the dinner with the students in New York — it was a delightful occasion, but my intuitive sixth sense, developed through years of living among the Chinese, warned me that it had a deeper purpose than mere courtesy. This purpose would be revealed in the final speech, of course, and so I waited in amused anticipation. In due time the last speaker arose, a handsome earnest young Chinese whose name I have forgotten, and after much flattery and congratulation the pith of the evening was revealed. They did not want the translation of Shui Hu Chüan, or All Men Are Brothers, to be published for westerners to read. And why? Because, the young man said, there are parts of it which describe a renegade priest eating human flesh, in his desperate hunger.
“The westerners will think we Chinese are uncivilized if they read this book,” the handsome young man said, flushing very red.
It was difficult to refuse their request after so fine a dinner, and I replied as politely as I could, but firmly. I begged them to consider that the book was hundreds of years old, older than Shakespeare. Had the English wished to suppress Macbeth, for example, because of the witches, what a loss to literature everywhere in the world! Surely the greatness of China, and so on—