[In the following review, Quennell finds My Country and My People to be a lively, readable, and amusing book which is designed for the general reader.]

From several points of view My Country and My People, Mr. Lin Yutang's contribution to the study of China and the Chinese temperament, is a remarkable and interesting book. For one thing, if we discount a certain naivety and redundancy, due to the fact that the author is employing a foreign language, it is unusually well written. Secondly, although Mr. Lin Yutang has been educated in Europe, the attitude he adopts is neither the defensive-aggressive nor the mystic-apologetic; he does not kowtow to Western “civilisation” and at the same time assert that the West is responsible for all the ills from which China is at present suffering, nor does he strike a pose on that singularly shaky pedestal—the superior wisdom of the ancient Orient. Mr. Lin Yutang is an uncommonly sensible man. He has a deep love for his own country and a warm admiration for the sterling qualities of his own people; but his feeling for Chinese virtues does not blind him to the existence of Chinese vices; and he would be the first to admit that the vices and virtues of the Chinese temperament are so closely connected that it is often quite impossible to draw an exact dividing line.

In many respects the Chinese bear a closer resemblance to the French than to any other European nation. Whereas the Japanese character includes distinctly Teutonic elements—worship of authority, sentimentality, timidity that sometimes turns to brutality, a fund of exalted patriotism united to considerable political ruthlessness—the Chinese are realists and opportunists, with a realistic appreciation of such unchanging factors in human affairs as money and the family. Like their French counterparts, educated Chinese have strongly developed family feelings, but are apt to decide that, if benevolence begins, it should also end, at home. The family is an exclusive and self-centred social organism; and much of the chaos of modern China has been caused by the Chinese inability to see beyond the family's limits, and by the tendency of every political situation to resolve itself, sooner or later, into a complicated and embittered game of family life.

These traits are dealt with, mildly yet unsparingly, by Mr. Lin Yutang in the illuminating section that he devotes to The Chinese Character. He breaks up its various components as follows—Mellowness, Patience, Indifference, Old Roguery, Pacifism, Contentment, Humour and Conservatism; and the most superficial acquaintance with the Chinese scene will provide vivid illustrations of every quality that Mr. Lin Yutang has included in his list. What, for example, could be mellower than the appearance of an elderly silver-bearded Chinese, placidly smiling as he sucks his tasselled pipe on the threshold of shop or restaurant some torrid summer evening, while the water-barrow squeaks by along the street? Yet good humour and good manners are balanced by an indifference to human suffering that seems to embrace the whole world, with the exception of the little world behind the gates of the family house; and the same Chinese city that affords so many proofs of philosophic good-nature teems with evidence of misery and poverty—rickshaw coolies whose only possessions are a thin cotton coat, faded blue drawers and a rag to wipe away the sweat; hideous beggars and cripples; labourers and carters as gaunt, wretched and unkempt as the struggling beasts of burden they thwack and curse.

In the light of history, however, this indifference, antipathetic though it may be, is not hard to understand. While, among European races, history is usually an incentive to action, among the Chinese it is an incentive to inaction; for they have learned that history is a circular movement and that the same moment perpetually returns, growth being followed by decline, triumph by disaster, order by confusion; with the result that a period of chaos, such as the present, is easily explained and calmly endured. A similar stoicism is reserved for the trials, torments and vicissitudes of individual life. Make yourself small, advised the sage, that disaster may sweep over you and leave you untouched!

There is no more significant contrast (writes Mr. Lin Yutang) than that between the parting instruction of Tom Brown's mother in the English classic … to “hold his head high and answer straight” and the traditional parting instruction of the Chinese mother that her son should “not meddle with public affairs.” … The Chinese people take to indifference as Englishmen take to umbrellas, because the political weather always looks a little threatening for the individual who ventures a little too far out alone. In other words, indifference has a distinct “survival-value” in China. Chinese youths are as public-spirited as foreign youths. … But somewhere between their twenty-fifth and their thirtieth years, they all become wise … and acquire this indifference which contributes a lot to their mellowness and culture.

Chinese indifference is based partly on the traditional lessons of history, partly on the pervasive influence of Taoist thought (itself a derivation of the historical process) with its celebration of the modest, the unelaborate, the small, the unassuming, the incomplete.

It is one of the chief merits of My Country and My People that it should provoke discussion; and, within the compass of a brief review, I cannot attempt to follow the numerous and fascinating trains of thought that are opened up on almost every page. Not all Mr. Lin Yutang's chapters are equally rewarding; but none are dull; and, although his criticisms of art and literature are less interesting than his analysis of social and political cause and effect, he never descends to journalistic commonplace. Here, in fact, is a book designed for the general reader, which is probably the best popular book of its kind that has yet been produced. It is lively, readable and—a very rare thing among books written by modern Orientals—in parts exceedingly amusing. The cross-references to Western life are unusually apt; and Mr. Lin Yutang's knowledge of Europe and European habits of thought gives his work a perspective and balance that he might otherwise have not been able to achieve.