OTHER RECENT BOOKS
Su HUA, encouraged and advised by Virginia Woolf, to whom she had written from a remote Chinese province in 1938, put down her childhood impressions and memories, regardless of Western ignorance of Chinese family structure and codes of behaviour. When she arrived in Europe in 1947, she approached Miss Sackville-West without knowing that Virginia Woolf had told her about her correspondence with Su Hua. Miss Sackville-West, too, insisted that Su Hua should continue to write in her own fakhion and keep as near as possible to the Chinese way of expression.
Others have introduced us to the pattern and moral foundations of the social fabric; Su Hua provides pictures of a more personal, intimate nature. Her disconnected chapters on " The Red-coat Man,'' " The Visit to the Fair with the Old Gardener," " The Arrival of Sixth Mother " have a captivating charm. She lets us share her love for old music and poetry and translates for our benefit some of her favourite poems. Dotted about are the proverbs her mother used to quote in times of stress and sorrow, full of practical wisdom and good-humoured resig- nation, such as : " Every man can only eat two bowls of rice at one meal ; at night he can only occupy one bed." A virtuous woman was expected to be broad-minded and to welcome concubines into the house- hold, which did not always work out smoothly. Third Mother and Sixth Mother came to blows, and Fourth Mother and the, maid- servants had to intervene energetically to prevent serious harm. During this quarrel Father—a high ranking official who had passed the Court Examination and had for some time been Mayor of Peking—retired to the studio of his Tenth Daughter, where he occupied himself meanwhile with calli- graphy.
Su Hua felt neglected and unwanted, because she was the fourth and youngest daughter of her mother and the Tenth Daughter in the homestead. Playing by herself in the garden one day, she was tempted by the white-washed wall and began to draw on it, an absorbing pastime. She treated the wall as if it were her private drawing board and covered it entirely with her designs. Caught in the act by a friend of her father's who was struck by her natural gift for drawing, she became at once her father's favourite ; her bedroom was fur- nished as a studio and she was sent to a highly-qualified teacher. A few of her drawings are included in this book ; delight- ful sketches which show a stiff, doll-like, little creature busy flying kites with' her foster mother, buying flowers with the gardener, learning poetry with Tutor Ben : an enchanting record 1
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