Confessions of Aleister Crowley

288 He had been originally alarmed by my taking my wife and child with me on such a journey. His letter amused me very much; it showed the class of the English people with whom he was expected to deal. He expected us to scream if hot water and cold water was not laid on in every Chinese inn, and to take down every Chinese coolie, farmer or merchant for a murderer with a special "down" on "foreign devils". He thought the we would be very much upset by that natural curiosity of the natives at seeing a white woman and interpret their interest as intentional insult. When he found with what practical common sense I travelled, he realized immediately that there was going to be no trouble. During this lunch he gave me more genuinely valuable information about China that I had had in the whole previous course of my life. One of his sayings was this: whatever one hears, however extraordinary, is true in China somewhere or other! He also told me the main psychological difference between the Chinese and Indian as regards practical dealing with them. The Chinese does not {471} respect the white man as the Indian does --- for his possession of high moral qualities. The very coolies despise their wealthiest merchants for their honesty, which, by the way, is unique in commerce. They respect any man who acts as their own mandarins act; with absolute lack of sympathy, justice or any other human feelings. They treat the traveler well in proportion as he is overbearing, haughty and avaricious. I found, in fact, that it was necessary to throw the whole of my previous principles overboard. One cannot fraternize with the Chinese of the lower classes; one must treat them with absolute contempt and callousness. On the other hand the Chinese gentleman is the noblest and courtliest in the world. His general bearing is that of Athos in The Three Musketeers, at his best. One's relations with him should be those of absolute mutual respect; and here again, intimacy of any kind is impossible. Each man abides on pinnacles of isolation. A typical case is the relation of the Emperor to a man like Li Hung-chang. The Son of Heaven was so far above even the greatest of his subjects that he could make no difference between him and the commonest labourer. He wrote to him simply as Li. Litton furnished me with careful notes of the stages of my journey to Yunnanfu, which I found extremely useful. I could not start from Tengyueh until my passport arrived from the consulate general. With extreme kindness, Litton invited me to stay at the consulate until it arrived. He himself hoped to be back in Tenjyueh within a week, so that I expected to see him again and learn more of his vision. We sat and talked for a couple of hours, each feeling instinctively that he had found a sympathetic spirit. The march from Bhamo to Tengyueh had been rater eventful. The first day was a pleasant ride of about nine miles to Mamouk where we dined at the officers' mess. We were still in the Burmese atmosphere and the minds of the people were preoccupied with European affairs and disease. There was no trace of the singular horror with which I was to come in contact beyond the frontier, a horror from which I found no one but Litton himself entirely free, until I got into the sphere of French influence. The next day we covered twenty-one miles and the third sixteen, where we camped for the first time in the open. The scenery had not been particularly striking; but there was a feeling of openness on leaving the Irrawaddy basin which we found extremely pleasant. On the fourth day we crossed the Chinese frontier. At this point it is marked by a small stream in a ravine. There is not proper bridge; only an insecure-looking tree trunk. I had doubts about my pony and decided to walk across. I was of course riding last to prevent straggling, and by the time I had crossed the stream the rest of the party were out of sight around the corner of the path which rises sharply along the hillside, in order to cross the mountain. I had got a little stiff with riding and thought I would stretch my {472}