No wonder we frequently hear of deaths from sunstroke or heat, a fatality almost unknown among the Chinese.[2] Chinese dress changes with the seasons, varying from the thickest fur to the lightest gauze.

In winter we wear fur or garments lined with cotton wadding; in spring we don a lighter fur or some other thinner garment; in summer we use silk, gauze or grass cloth, according to the weather.

Our fashions are set by the weather; not by the arbitrary decrees of dressmakers and tailors from Peking or elsewhere.

The number of deaths in America and in Europe every year, resulting from following the fashion must, I fear, be considerable, although of course no doctor would dare in his death certificate to assign unsuitable clothing as the cause of the decease of a patient.
Even in the matter of dressing, and in this twentieth century, "might is right".

In the opinion of an impartial observer the dress of man is queer, and that of woman, uncouth; but as all nations in Europe and America are wearing the same kind of dress, mighty Conventionality is extending its influence, so that even some natives of the East have discarded their national dress in favor of the uglier Western attire.
If the newly adopted dress were, if no better than, at least equal to, the old one in beauty and comfort, it might be sanctioned for the sake of uniformity, as suggested in the previous chapter; but when it is otherwise why should we imitate?
Why should the world assume a depressing monotony of costume?
Why should we allow nature's diversities to disappear?
Formerly a Chinese student when returning from Europe or America at once resumed his national dress, for if he dared to continue to favor the Western garb he was looked upon as a "half-foreign devil".