XV. All Work and No Play for Little Wung Foo
If Wung Foo had studied very hard at school, and learned as many as twenty-five new sign words, his grandmother told him stories in the evening. Wung Foo was a little Chinese boy, eight years old. His father was a rich silk merchant in Canton, China. His grandmother was a little old lady. But she wore such rich clothes, her face was so carefully painted, and she had so many jewelled pins and flowers in her hair, that she looked quite young. Wung Foo was proud to have her lean on. his shoulder when she wanted to cross the room. Her little crippled feet were only four inches long.
Chinese stories for children are the scar-iest kind. They are all about witches and goblins and dragons. They did not scare Wung Foo, as long as his grandmother talked in her sweet, sing-song way. Besides, his mother, his aunts, his sisters, his girl cousins and his baby brother were there in the women's sitting room. Wung Foo was a visitor. He lived on the men's side of the house.
Wung Foo had a chubby, yellow face and slanting black eyes, like Japanese Nogi. He, too, pushed a great deal of rice into his round mouth with chop-sticks, and drank many little cups of tea. In most other ways he was very, very different from Nogi. Nogi was always laughing, but Wung Foo was a sober little fellow. China isn't nearly as pleasant a place for children to be born in as Japan.
Wung Foo looked very fat in the winter time because he had to wear such thick, quilted cotton under-clothing. There were no little brass box, charcoal stoves, as in Japan, to keep the house warm. And there were no soft mats on the cold brick floors, so his gold trimmed, red cloth shoes had thick, white felt soles. He wore loose trousers of red silk, folded around his ankles, and a wadded blue silk coat fastened with gold buttons and cord loops. He kept his round cap on, even in the house. His head was shaven, all but a thick black lock on top. The barber braided some long, black silk threads with the hair, to make a queue (cue) like his father's, and left a pretty silk tassel at the end. By and by his hair would be long. Then he would not need the silk. The little boy was a small copy of his grandfather.
