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# Chinese vessels are badly built, and although the Chinese cannot conceal their astonishment at the ships in which we come to them, their shipwrights are nonetheless amazed when invited to take our ships as a pattern
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/kitaiskie-suda-stroiatsia-khudo-i-khotia-kitaitsy-ne-mogut-skryt-svoego-udivleniia-vidia-korabli-na-koikh-my-k-nim-priezzhaem-odnakozh-iz-korabelnye-mastera-izumliaiutsia-kogda-im-predl/
- Published: 2025-07-21T06:34:29.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:29:23.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: The East, Books, Society

Chinese vessels are badly built, and although the Chinese cannot conceal their astonishment at the ships in which we come to them, their shipwrights are nonetheless amazed when invited to take our ships as a pattern. They say that in China it has been the custom from time immemorial to build them thus, and if one tries to prove to them that this custom is unsound, they answer: it is enough that it is the custom with us.

Yet we see that in the 240 years that have passed since the publication of this work, the Chinese have cast off the pride of a powerful people cut off from all others, their attachment to the age-old, and above all their indolence, and have fully learned to copy Western ships and to build their own after their pattern