Views on Transportation

Excerpt from Walter Whitman's writings on Chinese transportation.

"An American horseman would turn up his nose at the Chinese horses."

The time he spent in China allowed Whitman to experience different aspects of a culture that was new and unfamiliar. In his writings he pays particularly close attention to the modes of transportation that were available in China at this time and how they differed from those in the United States. For instance, in this particular text, Whitman mentions the fact that someone from America would turn their nose up at the horses provided for transportation by the Chinese people.[1] Judging the Chinese culture on this particular mode of transportation most likely stemmed from the fact that American culture was advancing fast in the world of transportation. In the United States in the 1920s car ownership was increasing at a rapid rate. By the end of the decade more than twenty percent of Americans owned automobles.[2] While Whitman was still living in America, he was exposed to this rapid influx of innovative transportation. With this experience in mind, Whitman was surprised to see that Chinese culture was mainly operating with horses and man-powered rickshas. His perception of American culture and its advances played a role in how he evaluated and judged the Chinese culture he was immersed in between 1925 to 1926.

[1] Walter G. Whitman, [No Title], 1925-1926, letter, Salem State University Archives and Special Collections.

[2] Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 77.