Comparing China – the Bizarre and the Silly – a new entry

A few years ago when I was writing my history of foreign journalists in China, Through the Looking Glass (hard copy or very competitively priced Kindle edition) I gathered together a series of rather odd comparisons of China by visitors to places back home that struck me as slightly silly, but fun. Perhaps one day I’ll get enough to do something with, but until then here’s a new one I came across recently and the others below from the great and the good for your delectation:

The great and usually erudite and brilliant W Somerset Maugham wrote:

‘…the bamboo, the Chinese bamboo, transformed by some magic of the mist, look just like the hops of Kentish field’

indeed!! But compared to the below perhaps not so odd:

• The American comedian Will Rogers compared the countryside around Harbin to Nebraska when he visited in the early 1930s.
• In the 1870s Jules Verne compared Hong Kong to a town in Kent or Surrey
• In 1933 Peter Fleming toured China and compared Chengde to Windsor
• He then compared Peking with Oxford for some reason!
• Later in 1938 Auden and Isherwood described the countryside around Guangzhou as reminiscent of the Severn Valley
• And then during his stay in China during the Second World War the (yet to be at the time) famous Sinologist Joseph Needham compared Fuzhou to Clapham and, perhaps most bizzarely, wartime Chongqing to Torquay!

And so…here’s Clapham in case you thought yourself transported via this photograph to Fuzhou with Joseph Needham!!