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As an epigraph to Taipei jen (Taipei residents), Pai Hsien-yung could not have chosen a better poem for effectively evoking the mood of sadness and that gripping sense of loss emanating from the “wild grasses” and the “slanting sun” of his stories, for dramatically bringing out the contrasts between the past and the present, between age and youth—one of the memorable features of this anthology. Inasmuch as “Black Coat Lane” can be read as a tiao-ku (mourning the past) poem, so can Taipei jen be read as an elegy on the final dissolution of an ancient culture. That Pai Hsien-yung should have chosen Taipei as “the center of paralysis” is only logical, since the very concept of life for so many of his Taipei jen depends on the observation of rituals. By rituals, I mean a practice or a pattern of behavior repeated in a prescribed manner. Understood in these terms, such a story as “State Funeral” could not have taken place anywhere other than in Taipei. Where else could the death of a Kuomintang general be honored in such a pompous manner? And where could Tou Fu-jen (in “Wandering in the Garden”) stage her k'un-ch'ü dinner party if not in Taipei? In Taipei, if she chooses to, she could still prepare a cup of tea with as-much loving care as Yün Niang did in Fousheng Lu-chi (Six Chapters of a Floating Life), even if it is no longer possible to serve it in the immaculate manner of a Miao Yü in Hung-lou meng (The Dream of the Red Chamber).

IN POINT OF PROGRESS, THE INTERIM YEARS BETWEEN Thunderstorm (1934) and Sunrise (1936) were most beneficial to the artistic growth of Ts'ao Vii, for in these three years he had gradually become aware of the limitation of his own craft as expressed in Thunderstorm. "I have recently become more and more disappointed—to the point of nausea—with Thunderstorm," he confessed in his Postscript to Sunrise; "I find its structure too 'theatrical,' a result of my overdependence on the magic of stage tricks."

1. Mechanical stimulation on dorsal surface of the spinal cord can evoke the scratching movement in decerebrate cats.2. The area to evoke the scratch movements is located on the dorsal surface of the cord 2mm lateral to the dorsal central spinal artery at the level of C1 and C2. The movements lasted for 4-34 sec. and the latency ranged from less than 1 sec. to 4 sec. and the frequency was 1-4 per sec.3. In cats anesthetized with pentobarbital, the scratching movements could not be elicited.4. Pinna, galloping and stepping reflex movements were also evoked by mechanical stimulation of various levels of the spinal cord in decerebrate cats.

The elastic scattering of electrons is calculated with a Hylleraas product wave function for the target atom and with neglect of polarization. A narrow resonance is found at an incident kinetic energy of 4.2 eV, provided that the exchange operator is changed slightly, from the value corresponding to the no-polarization approximation, by multiplying by a constant factor differing from unity by plus or minus a few per cent.

Though Taiwan has since 1949 been the seat of the Nationalist Government and the domicile of several millions of exiled Chinese, no serious literature has been produced until the late fifties.1 Explanations are not difficult to give. For one thing, since nearly all the important figures of modern Chinese literature have remained in the People's Republic of China,” their works are therefore proscribed for political reasons. Cut off from their mainland base, the disinherited young Taiwanese writers, having no native idols to emulate and anxious to create a tradition of their own, could only import from the West whatever “isms” they considered to be the literary fashions of the day—symbolism, surrealism, existentialism, futurism, modernism, phenomenalism, etc. Quite often, however, what they regarded as daring experiments at the time of initiation later turned out to be

IT is small wonder that Thunderstorm' (Lei-yii), first published in I933 and performed in I935,2 should have enjoyed enduring popularity among Chinese readers and theatre-goers. For the play, despite its artistic flaws, touches upon two of the most sensitive issues involved in the May Fourth Movement: a socialist concern for the plight of the workers under capitalist exploitation, and an individual effort to assert personal freedom and happiness under the crippling weight of patriarchal society. In short, Thunderstorm was so ruthless in its attacks upon traditional Chinese morals and social system that the government, on three occasions, felt impelled to place it under a ban.3 But it was not Ts'ao Yii's desire to be regarded merely as a writer on social problems. When asked about the purpose of the play, he said: "But strangely, now that I recall the state of my mind when I was writing the play three years ago, I do not think I should resort to deceit and make my ideas sound better than they really were. I didn't then distinctly feel that I intended to correct, satirize, or criticize anything. Quite possibly, when I came close to finishing the play, it might be that I was seized by a sudden passion so overwhelming that I could not but seek to release it in vilifying the Chinese family system and society. Yet, at the very outset, when I first conceived the idea of Thunderstorm, what fascinated me most was no more than one or two episodes, a few characters, and a complex and yet primitive emotion."4 His obsession, ostensibly, then, is of a classic order: passion and fate, and for this he wishes to be reckoned as a tragic writer. Thus, instead of pointing to the sociological problems his play raises, he directs our attention to the deaths of Ssufeng and Chou Ch'ung, to him an indisputable manifestation of capricious fate, and to the complex character of Chou Fan-yi, a victim of unruly passion. What with his understanding of man's helplessness in an indifferent universe, and his relative restraint from using abrasive language to indict the "bad guys," Ts'ao Yiu has attained in Thunderstorm some measure of compassion for his characters not to be recalled until Peking Man (I940). For at least he is able to observe: "What pitiful creatures human beings are: self-satisfied, as if they are masters of their own fates

The elastic scattering of electrons by helium atoms is calculated with a target wave function containing some correlation. Polarization is simulated by the addition of a small attractive potential. A resonance is found at an energy which is extremely sensitive to the magnitude of the polarization. The resonant wave function has one electron in the 1s level, and the other two in the correlation component (orthogonal to (1s)2) of the helium ground state. The treatment shows that such a resonance should always be found in a one-channel calculation with a target wave function containing some correlation. However, the customary approximations are of such dubious validity at the resonance that it is doubtful whether anything like it exists in the real world.

Summary An inflatable neck splint to be used with a standard Myo cervical collar in the prevention and treatment of cervical scar contractures is described.

Though never a favorite with the critics or the readers when it was published in 1940, Peking Man, its technical flaws notwithstanding, is not only Ts'ao Yii's most mature product but also one of the dramatic highlights of modern Chinese theater. Its depiction of a decadent civilization is so powerful that even so stringent a critic of modem Chinese literature as C. T. Hsia has conceded: "Ts'ao Yii