Wednesday 16 September 2009

Vintage Beij 3: Chinese girls for US soldiers



By popular demand, more of the Pocket Guide to China - a introduction to China for US soldiers in 1943.

An edited version of the Guide, which has had the lovable wartime racism of my earlier post removed, can be read here at the Internet Archive.

Perhaps the highlight for me was the booklet's timeless advice on Chinese girls:

THE modern Chinese girl, in her long, closely fitting gown, her bare arms and short hair, is often very pretty. Yet it is well to remember that in China the attitude toward women is different from ours in America. Chinese women in some ways are more free than they are here in America — that is, they do some things which American women don't yet do. They are in the Army, they fight side by side with the guerrillas. But in their relations with men they haven't the same freedom as women have in America.
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There are Chinese girls in cabarets and places of amusement who may be used to free and easy ways. But the average Chinese girl will be insulted If you touch her, or will take you more seriously than you probably want to be taken. A mistake in this may cause a lot of trouble.