The Painted Veil

This week I read W. Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil. I've always enjoyed Maugham (thanks, Mom!), but I have lately had a better appreciation of his novels and stories that take place in the Colonial Far East. As I've noted before, last spring, some of Maugham's descriptions of the people attracted to living here as expatriates hasn't changed in the last 90 years or so since Maugham was last travelling through here. Despite the fact that on the large scale, the world map has changed politically, what with Asia no longer being officially colonized, people remain so much the same, you know.

Last spring I pulled from a Maugham short story a generalized description of expat men in China. From The Painted Veil comes a much more specific sketch of a man, in this case Waddington, that I feel I have met here, perhaps many times. While Kitty attributes his personality development to the fact that he has spent many years away from any "man of his own color to talk to," I have to think that the "eccentric freedom" in which his character evolved was due mainly just to his living in an alien culture for a very long time, regardless of how many other waiguoren are around. Or at least that is what I think happened with those Waddington's I've met.

He had lived many years in outports, often no man of his own colour to talk to, and his personality had developed in eccentric freedom. He was full of fads and oddities. His frankness was refreshing. he seemed to look upon life in a spirit of banter, and his ridicule of the Colony at Hong-Kong was acid; but he laughed also at the Chinese officials in Mei-tan-fu and at the cholera which decimated the city. He could not tell a tragic story of one of heroism without making it faintly absurd. He had many anecdotes of his adventures during twenty years in China, and you concluded from them that the earth was a very grotesque, bizarre, and ludicrous place.

And speaking of The Painted Veil, you, too, can celebrate my birthday with me. Get the movie in your Netflix queue, or get it from the library, or however. Unfortunately, for this, the book does not count. Sometime over the weekend of November 9-11 watch the movie and marvel at the beauty. In the book, I believe the cholera epidemic takes place somewhere in Hunan province. However, for the movie, the filmmakers moved it to Guilin. And we will be going to Guilin and Yangshuo for my birthday!!! We are so excited. Randy's assistant has been helping us make the arrangements. When she called the hotel in Guilin, she was told that yesterday it was only 20 degrees C, so she was worried about us going there when it is "too cold." Heck, 20 degrees C---doesn't she know how AWESOME that sounds? And it is getting down to 15 degrees C at night. Oh joy, oh joy.