The criticisms Allen mentions were those reprinted in the Modern Library Edition, along with Miss Buck’s reply. He is right on when he points out that the Chinese objected to being pictured as medieval, but the issue is more complicated. I talk about these in my “The Storm over the Peasant: Orientalism, Rhetoric and Representation in Modern China” (in Contesting the Master Narrative: Essays in Social History, ed. Shelton Stromquist and Jeffrey Cox, 150-172. University of Iowa Press, 1998).