Our heroine Fanny is perplexed and distressed. She needs time alone for reflection so she goes to a quiet room at Mansfield called the East room. But before we get to those internal deliberations, Austen pauses to describe the contents of the East room in a way that she perhaps never does for any other room in her novels. She also explains how Fanny came to use it as her own private day-room, even though Aunt Norris will not allow the comfort of a fire. We learn what having this room means to Fanny. (The relevant excerpt is posted at the end of this blog for anyone wanting a refresher).
   The East room is Fanny's refuge, her “nest of comforts,” even though it’s chilly and she has only battered school-room chairs to sit in and it’s decorated with drawings and furniture “too ill done for the drawing-room.” Here she keeps objects of sentimental value, like a sketch from her seafaring brother. She has her geraniums and her books. Fanny is a collector of books and she likes reading. As she is pacing and thinking, Edmund visits her, to tell her he plans to will relent and join the others in some private theatricals. He and Fanny both know Sir Thomas would disapprove, so Fanny can't give him her whole-hearted concurrence.
​  Edmund awkwardly tries to segue out of the uncomfortable disagreement by talking about her books: “[Y]ou will be taking a trip into China, I suppose. How does Lord Macartney go on?” He babbles nervously: “And here are Crabbe’s Tales, and the Idler, at hand to relieve you, if you tire of your great book. I admire your little establishment exceedingly; and as soon as I am gone, you will empty your head of all this nonsense… and sit comfortably down to your table. But do not stay here to be cold.” And poof! he’s out the door, down the stairs and down the hill to Mary Crawford at the parsonage...

  "It was a sweet view—sweet to the eye and the mind. English verdure, English culture, English comfort, seen under a sun bright, without being oppressive." So says Jane Austen of the view from Donwell Abbey in Emma. Jane Austen was proud of her country and proud of being English. English law was superior. English manners and customs were on the whole superior to other nations.
​​  When Catherine Morland talks herself down from her Gothic fantasies in Northanger Abbey, she recalls what Henry Tilney told her: "Remember, we are English."   
​  Austen's narrative voice adds, (in phrases a bit wittier than we would expect to find in Catherine's interior monologue): "But in the central part of England there was surely some security for the existence even of a wife not beloved, in the laws of the land, and the manners of the age. Murder was not tolerated, servants were not slaves, and neither poison nor sleeping potions to be procured, like rhubarb, from every druggist." ...   

   This morning, while sipping my coffee and looking at my Twitter feed, I saw a much re-tweeted blog post that contained misinformation about health care in China. The writer was arguing that medical innovation does not arise out of a single-payer hospital system. Medicine and medical breakthroughs only come about in the robust environment of capitalism.
   I could quibble, but I'm not going to argue about that. What I took exception to was the blog writer's portrayal of a Chinese hospital and Chinese medical care as squalid and dirty. Overall, that's a misleading picture.
   First, China has prosperous provinces (the ones on the coast, the ones filled with factories and trade) and it has poorer provinces. Better health care is available in the more prosperous areas and in the bigger cities. That applies to us as well -- if you live in a dinky little small town, there is no giant gleaming hospital down the road, is there? ​

My Aunt Shirley used to say of some essential household tool: "I can't keep house without it!" And I sometimes feel that way in China.

One aspect of living abroad is that some very basic activities and routines are conducted differently, including housecleaning.
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Take the simple act of sweeping the floor, for example. In the west, we use a long-handled broom and hold it with both hands. The disadvantage is that you need someone to hold the dustpan for you, or you awkwardly try to handle both broom and dustpan.
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 But sweeping evolved differently in China. Here, the brooms are shorter and are used with one hand and the motion feels different...