My Several Worlds by Pearl S. Buck Read Free Book Online

land, and the historic temples and monasteries, once the possession of emperors, in my time tad only remnants left of the imperial green and yellow porcelain tiles of the Ming dynasty. The pagoda still stood, however, elegant and graceful against the sky.
    In the river was the bigger but less famous Silver Island, and a picnic there was an expedition requiring the hiring of a boat to carry us to and fro, and we had to spend a day for the trip. It was a fascinating one, however, for the narrow pathway clung to the steep rocky cliffs and when I had climbed to the top and looked down upon the yellow whirlpools of the river, here as wide as a sea, I was pleasantly terrified.
    The Chinese moon year was rich with treasures, too, of feast days, each with its particular dainty to be made and eaten, and each with its special toys and delightful occupations. Thus at the Feast of Lanterns our faithful servants bought us paper rabbits pulled upon little wheels and lit within by candles, or lotus flowers and butterflies or even horses, split in two, one half of which I carried on my front and the other strapped upon my back, so that I looked like a horse walking in the dark, to my great joy. And in the spring there were kites made in every imaginable shape, and sometimes we made them ourselves of split reeds and rice paste and thin red paper, and we spent our days upon the hills, watching the huge and intricate kites that even grown men flew, a mighty dragon or a thirty foot centipede or a pagoda that needed a dozen men to get it aloft. We played with birds in cages and birds, that could talk if we taught them carefully enough, black macaws and white-vested magpies, or we had nightingales for music. We listened to the wandering storytellers who beat their little gongs upon the country roads or stopped at villages at night and gathered their crowds upon a threshing floor. We went to see the troupes of travelling actors who performed their plays in front of the temples far or near, and thus I early learned my Chinese history and became familiar with the heroes of the ages. The Chinese New Year was of course the crown of all the year’s joys, and on that day my two childhood worlds came near to meeting, for we exchanged gifts with our Chinese friends and received calls and went calling, dressed in our best and bowing and wishing “Happy New Year and Riches” everywhere we went. Such occupations and pleasures belonged to my Chinese world into which my parents seldom entered with me, for they remained foreign, whereas I was not really a foreigner, either in my own opinion or in the feelings of my Chinese friends.
    Yet there was always the other world on the fringe of my Chinese world, the white world, and the white world had its own holidays and pleasures. Halloween, for instance, I faithfully observed with a jack-o’-lantern made from a yellow Chinese gourd and the kindly Chinese neighbors pretended to be terrified when a fiery grinning face shone through their windows on the October night. Christmas, too, was a foreign festival, a family joy, and so were the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving. My parents were careful to observe all such days and to teach us what they meant. And these were not all. When Queen Victoria’s birthday came around, every American as well as every other white family received an invitation to the British Club, a forlorn little house up in the hills surrounded by a small racecourse for ponies. On the Queen’s Birthday the Club took on dignity. The hall was decorated with the British colors draped around the black and white portrait of Queen Victoria, a plump and severe-looking little woman, and we all sat on benches and stared at her and listened to a discourse by the British Consul and diplomatic replies by the other Consuls, usually only the American and the French.
    Then we stood and sang “God Save the Queen” as heartily as we could, although I could never understand why the tune was the same as “My