Oil for the Lamps of China

I got this ancient paperback as a freebie from a sidewalk cart in front of a used bookstore ages ago. No one would buy it because it's neither famous nor infamous. As a freebie, it was interesting to read as an example of how VERY MUCH the world has changed. Her Chinese people speak in an oddly archaic English, as thought Cotton Mather had time-traveled to teach them. Condescending much?

What worked, though, was the way her main character was bullish on how to exploit China's economic potential to make him rich and ends up broke and betrayed by even more unscrupulous American men. The Chinese people are characterized without the heavy moralizing pall I expected to need to brush off. But here's the thing: This outsider's view of an show more immense, ancient culture was written iin the early 1930s, yet feels as old as a Victorian novel because the take is reflective of an unquestioning acceptance of "Western superiority," though not explicitly. It's implicit in the framing of the conflicts her oil executive has with Authority, Chinese or American, being valorizing of him and his role. No wonder its 1935 film was so boring to watch, as this was very easy to get onto the screen.

Two interesting notes: The author was married to a Standard Oil company man whose job was in China; the edition I had (it disintegrated as I read it so it's been chucked out) was printed in 1945, when China was an important theater in the ongoing war, so was meant to cash in on public attention. show less