Lin Yutang, writing in My Country and My People, has several remarks endorsed by many Chinese Texans:

"The Chinese are a nation of individualists. They are family minded, and not social minded. . . . The Family is the root of Chinese society from which all Chinese social characteristics derive."

"The Chinese . . . not only sees with his mind, but he, also, feels with his heart, and he knows that the blood surging in his veins . . . is Chinese blood."

"The difference between China and the West seems to be that the Westerners have a greater capacity for getting and making more things and a lesser ability to enjoy, while the Chinese have a greater determination and capacity to enjoy the few things they have. This trait, our concentration on earthly happiness, is as much a result as a cause of the absence of religion. For if one cannot believe in the life hereafter as the consummation of the present life, one is forced to make the most of his life before the farce is over. The absence of religion makes this concentration possible. From this a humanism has developed which frankly proclaims a man-oriented universe, and lays down the rule that the end of all knowledge is to serve human happiness. . . ."

Yutang, of course, pointed out that the family structure keeps such thoughts from leading to simple, egotistic hedonism.

[Chinese Library Research Files,
Institute of Texan Cultures,
San Antonio, Texas, c. 1974]

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