THE TOWN OF BLUE VALLEY
He smiled. Sun always smiles the smile of friendship when he speaks of his followers.
"It is true that the report was circulated. You see, some of my over-zealous followers thought that I could obtain protection from the American Government against the Manchus by claiming to have been born in Honolulu, where, in fact, I did live for many years. So, of their own accord, they circulated this report; but ah, no! Choy Hung... Choy Hung... that is the hamlet of my birth, and the birthplace of my immediate forebears. I say immediate forebears, for we have lived only a few generations in Choy Hung. The village of our ancestral temples is at Kung Kun, on the East River."
Choy Hung, as a birthplace for a child who wanted to become a reformer, was n't such a bad town. These small, open-air towns of Kwantung are very democratic, and boys grow up in a freefor-all way that develops independence of character. In the large Chinese cities the economie caste system (I do not mean social) is sometimes something of a hindrance to the development of a boy's democracy of character. If a boy's parents are able to send him to school, he may consider himself to be on the road to high scholarship and will not do any kind of manual labor. "Me no belong coolie," is an expression familiar to any
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