Word: mandarins
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...done. As Amherst withdrew from Peking, the snub was subtly underscored. In the streets he passed a beggar, who rose up deferentially. Amherst's mandarin escort instantly commanded the beggar to sit down again-"the British ambassador," dolefully observed his secretary, "not being now considered deserving respect even from the lowest class of society...
Once they asked the ambassador to kowtow before the figure of a dragon; the imperial emblem. This struck the Occidentals as an Oriental trick that would somehow signify their subservience. Amherst offered to do so if a mandarin of equal rank would genuflect before a portrait of the British sovereign. "Inadmissible!" snapped the Chinese. Amherst played the idea a bit further. He would kowtow to the Emperor if it were guaranteed that any Chinese ambassador in London would make similar obeisance to the English throne. "Impossible!" snorted the mandarins...
...tunghsi, or curio salesmen, find business rough. Their bronzes, brasswork and jade figurines bring only a quarter of the price they commanded last winter. One tunghsi man reminisces mournfully: "The mandarin coats-ah! We used to sell them for $20 apiece. When we ran out of real ones we went to the undertakers and bought up their supply of secondhand burial clothes. The burial clothes were even more ornate, and the Americans were twice as happy...
Throughout it all, the linguistic battle lines between the Mandarin-speaking refugees from the north and the laughing, dark-skinned Cantonese drew tighter and tighter. The northerners aloofly refused to attempt the Cantonese dialect and its eight singing tones (Mandarin has only four). They snootily reminded their hosts that Canton and Kwangtung Province had been declared a barbarous territory as recently...
...half later, Formosa's Governor Chen Cheng and Chen Yi, governor of Chiang's native Chekiang Province, were among a small group of officials who watched the Gimo's plane land. Following greetings, Chiang and his friends banqueted on fried shrimp, stuffed chicken and mandarin fish with sweet and sour sauce at Hangchow's famed Lou Wai Restaurant. Said one of the guests: "The Generalissimo seemed calm and relaxed-like one who has solved a great problem and is content...