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In every European who sets foot in China, a treasure-secker
slumbers and awakens quite quickly. But the treasures aren't
necessariky where you chinks opera dresses and Martian rings.
may be gifts rich with memory, yet the profusion of popular
images opened up a whole world to our eyes. The two-penny
toys on the sidewalks, the whistling birds. the articulating
paper beasts-marvels of minimal mechanics- and abore all,
the gallery of theater masks with their black and white make up.
half gannet bird, half Madwoman of Chaillot: you find them by
 great sheets in boxes at the secondhand booksellers, like stamps
from the moon, bearing witness to a natural sense of form and
beauty that we thought indestructible. Wrongly so, as history
would later demonstrate...