On a Chinese Screen

"On a Chinese Screen" is a travel book by W. Somerset Maugham.


It is a series of short stories Maugham wrote during a trip along the Yangtze River in 1919-1920. Although ostensibly about China, the book is really focused on the various westerners he met during the trip and their struggles to accept or adapt to the cultural differences they encounter.


These differences are often as enormous and as alienating as the country itself. Within the narrow confines of their colonial milieu, missionaries, consuls, army officers and company managers are all gently ridiculed as they plod along obliviously with the life they know.