Contents

Introduction

I. Europe

The Beauty, the Water

The Lovely Impoverished Land

The Mid-Summer Carnival

A Chinese View of the English Mentality

Scottish Fishermen

Queen of the Secretaries

A Professor 1 Met in Germany

The Winter Is Also Warm

The Finnish Girl

II. North America

Miscellaneous Talks on the People of the East

and West

She Loves Man, but Not Men

A Purse

Call the Police: A Tale

The Melting Pot and the Mosaic: A Comparison

of Americans and Canadians

A Nightmarish Scene from Life

Behind the Black Suit, White Shirt and Red Tie

The Kerrs

Going to Court in the United States

Mr. Blume

Service Attitudes in the U.S

Americans from A to Z

The Americans 1 Know: Not Much Diffcrent

from Us Chinese

Oh, Those Little Gold Earrings

Americans and Divorce

A Greedy Landlord

The Judy 1 Know

Americans Around Me

I found the French women very pretty when

1 arrived in Paris. Women should be like water.

French women are the prettiest in Europe, although

some of them are built like men. A couple of times,

1 mistook a woman for a man, and vice versa. Some

French men have long hair. Those with natural

curves look like women because the style of their

hair is not much different from that of women.

When they wear shapeless overcoats, it is a real

puzzle to distinguish their sex.

But another group of French women is very

pretty, each woman with a charm of her own. The

best of them are really as beautiful as water. But

unfortunately, most of them lack a touch of nobility,

or are too artificial. In World War 11, European men

suffered heavy casulties and there have been much

more females than males among the babies born

after the war. This made the men extremely con-

ceited despite the fact that they received little of rhe

charm between Heaven and Earth. In Paris, female

clerks overwhelm their male colleagues in almost

every office, not to mention department stores and

factories, which are kingdoms of women.

There are too many divorced women and too

many unmarried mothers in Paris. French men and

women don't want to bind themselves with the

yoke of marriage. Instead, they prefer to keep thcm-

selves free to enjoy love. French people care for

their present enjoyment very much. The future is

the future, why would they worry about it now?

Because of the imbalance between boys and girls,

only one in every three women has the chance

to marry. Influenced by this environment, French

women have seen things through; though thcy have

become unmarried mothers, they still believe that

those who have been loved are much happier than

those who haven't. So they do not weep and trouble

themselves with useless worries. Their concept of

love is to pick it up and put it down easily.