served.
Almost everywhere in Hong Kong we Chinese are treated in
Do you not see why we Chinese hate
this same overbearing manner.
the British people? .... A day of reckoning will come."
In the matter of losing face', the Chinese so rarely show
their feelings that British in Hong Kong were too prone to imagine
no exception was taken to the discrimination against them, as in the
example I have just given. Doubtless the bank's official would have
been astonished could he have seen revealed that lady's burning
resentment, wounded pride and bitter hatred at being made to look
small before Europeans and other Chinese. Even if they were aware
of it, I daresay few British people in Hong Kong would willingly
admit that this incivility to the Chinese rudeness, arrogance, dis-
crimination, 'East of Suez' complex, snobbishness, call it what you
will has been the root-cause of loss of friendship between the two
peoples, and may lead to unemployment for thousands of British people
in Ingland, merely because antagonized Chinese have coldly discouraged
the marketing of British goods in China, and have favoured trade with
Britain's competitors.
Mrs. Lo's case is just one of a multitude of examples that
for years occurred daily before the fall of Hong Kong in December, 1941. Hundreds of Chinese were daily made to 'lose face' by British
people in Hong Kong hundreds of Chinese hurt daily in their most
sensitive spot. Yet, even today, if an Englishman were to ask a
Chinese point-blank: "Why do you dislike us British?" it is this very
reason the Chinese will be unlikely to give. To admit it to him
would be to set aside the balm with which he soothes his wounded
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