To the left of the vermillion door of Yeh Ling’s new house was a tablet set into the brick buttress inscribed with those words, which to the old Chinese represent the beginning and end of philosophical piety: “Kuang tsung yu tou,” which in English may be roughly translated: “Let your acts reflect glory upon your ancestors.”
Kuang tsung yu touYeh Ling, for all his western civilization, would one day burn gold paper before a shrine within those vermillion doors and would stand with hidden hands before the family shrine and ask commendation and approval for his important acts.
Now he was sitting on one of the very broad and shallow steps that led from terrace to terrace, watching the primitive system by which his engineer was getting ready the casting of the second concrete pillar. About th
