Status Updates From The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

...I suppose I need not say that I could penetrate no further into this, Fu-Manchu's latest plot, than the drugging of Norris West with hashish? Of his having been so drugged with Indian hemp-that is, converted temporarily into a maniac-...

She threw open her cloak, and it is a literal fact that i rubbed my eyes, half believing that I dreamed. For beneath she was arrayed in gossamer silk which more indicated the perfect lines of her slim shape; wore a jeweled girdle and barbaric ornaments; was a figure fit for he walled garden of Stamboul - a figure amazing, incomprehensible, in the prosaic setting of my rooms.

Today we may seek romance and ail to find it: unsought, it lies in wait for us at most prosaic corners of life's highway. (12)

Air travel was only 10 years old, so most people traveled by ship to reach another continent. So, by our standards, for most people, going to China really was like going to Mars. And it really isn't that long ago, only about 100 years. From this perspective, it's surprising we've come as far as we have with our prejudices or maybe just not so surprising how backward we still are.

From our perspective today, this seems ridiculous and foolish since we're so much more advanced (are we?) and we can understand the cultural differences made the Chinese people of the day seem like aliens from space, something unknown and to be feared. It's important to remember how isolated populations were back then by comparison to today.

Sometimes it's a good idea to put books like this into context while you're reading them. Insidious was first published in 1913 just a year before the beginning of World War 1. The book comes from a context of the Chinese being the "yellow menace." Petrie often approaches his subject from the perspective that the Chinese are a danger to the "white race" and sees them as barbarians, not as advanced as his race.