The Girls Of The Orient

Ever Since Marco Polo did his thing, wanderers have been lured to the Asiatic shore of the Pacific basin and the island empires of the China Sea. To some, the Orient meant adventure; to others, it symbolized a quick fortune in spices, gold, ivory and silks. But to all, it meant girls--fragile, alluring, warm, sensual and devoted. After the peripatetic Polo returned from Cathay filled with admiration for the courtesans of the great Khan, Dutch and Portuguese sailors, home from the Spice Islands, enhanced the dream with stories of slender, ivory-skinned maidens dedicated to serving man's slightest need. Several centuries later, puritanical Yankee-clipper captains made pious entries in their logs deploring the topless fashions of the Oriental (text continued on page 186)Girls Of The Orient (continued from page 172) island dwellers--but often added a wistful note of wonder at the shapeliness of their uncovered charms.

Even today, returning travelers (including myriad American Servicemen who have toured in Korea, Japan and Vietnam) can testify that the Asian girl still devotes herself single-mindedly to pleasing her man. Western influences have begun to shake traditional Oriental cultures, of course, and many girls want to escape the inflexibly traditional atmosphere of their mother's world. But despite the rapid spread of Western attitudes, there is little evidence that the girls of New Asia will be any less intuitively attentive than their forebears.

The girls of the Orient range from the dungareed, gum-chewing teeny-bopper on Tokyo's Ginza to the bare-breasted wood nymphs of the Luzon mountains in the Philippines. There are hundreds of dialects and dozens of nationalities and cultures in the East; but with few exceptions, Orientals divide into two great racial types: the Mongoloids of Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, China and the overseas Chinese colonies; and the Malayan-Polynesians of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippine Islands and parts of Taiwan. The Mongoloid maiden typically has the delicate creamy tint of worn ivory, with only a faint flush of color across the cheekbones. The Malayan-Polynesian girl wears the warmer color of buckwheat honey. Both types take great pride in their satin skins and subtle hues. Among the Malayan Filipinos, for instance, daughters are taught from infancy that God, in making man, burned the first batch, pulled the second set from the fire underdone and pasty white, but succeeded perfectly on the third try--with a group colored a seductive toasty brown. These tan Adams and Eves, of course, became the Malay race.

Western tourists rubbernecking in the crowded downtown streets of great Far Eastern cities are struck by the obvious pride Oriental girls take in their sexuality. Their training from childhood teaches them the provocative value of the smallest gesture; their dances instruct them in the gently compelling power of languorous posture and the hidden passion that can be suggested in fluid motion. Almost instinctively, the girls of Thailand, Hong Kong, Bali and--perhaps above all--Vietnam walk with a grace as alluring as it is feline.

Prudery, Western style, is not an Oriental characteristic. On the appropriate occasion, the Oriental girl will not hesitate to uncover her womanhood to the world's admiration. The canals of Thailand are thronged with public bathers, most of them adroit at preserving modesty with a sparse yard of cotton cloth but completely unembarrassed by an occasional and often premeditated slipup. The forest maidens of Thailand keep their half-clothed bodies trim with hours of exercise--pounding rice in giant mortars. And Balinese girls continue proudly to leave bare the firm, cup-shaped breasts that have fascinated Western travelers for four centuries--despite a short-lived cover-up decree by former president Sukarno.

Frank and untroubled acceptance of her role as a woman leads the Eastern girl easily into the art of pleasing men. A newcomer to the East, however, must realize that the Japanese word gaijin, meaning foreigner, has a pejorative connotation and is often applied to any Westerner in the Orient. Attitudes toward East dating West differ widely; the Thais have as little racism as any civilized people in the world, but many a Chinese merchant would be horrified to find his daughter dating a gaijin, or anyone else, except a chaperoned Chinese suitor of his--not her--choice.

Yet the Western visitor has no cause to despair. When the Japanese retreated from mainland and island Asia after World War Two, they left behind a contemporary version of the geisha, in the form of bar and ballroom hostesses. These girls of outstanding beauty and charm sit, chat and dance with interested males and only occasionally resemble the B-girls of Western lands. Except for those in the cheapest dives (especially in Saigon), hostesses are eminently respectable and make a comfortable living simply by being pretty and amusing, at hourly rates. They do not have to indulge in professional amour to pay the rent. Yet they are healthy young women, chosen for their seductiveness and subject to all the temptations and passions of their sisters anywhere in the world. When working hours are over--and night spots close early in the East, usually before midnight--they are on their own and available.

But the action is not confined to girls who are, after all, professionals, regardless of how properly they conduct themselves. Many a not-so-old Asia hand attends the fashionable race tracks, where the smartest women of the European and Oriental colonies spend frequent afternoons. Hot-springs resorts and beaches provide equally happy hunting grounds--because even the most modest maid is more informal while vacationing in a bikini. Many native-run, night spots have a relaxed, international atmosphere far more tolerant of casually formed friendships than the stuffy colonial hotels left behind by the retreating British. And virtually every capital boasts some restaurant or night club frequented by a smart set with Westernized attitudes toward making friends. One of the easiest ways to find such watering places is to call the local public-relations office of one of the major airlines.

Not to be neglected, however, are those Oriental girls working in the new army of female office employees. By virtue of their jobs, they are far more Westernized--and more accessible--than their stay-at-home compatriots. English is now the world's commercial tongue and most employees can speak it fairly fluently. Attractive office girls browsing in United States Information Service libraries are there because America and the West fascinate them. Invariably, they eagerly welcome a chance to practice their English.

Like her counterparts the world over, the Oriental girl admires power and wealth, so the normally well-off American starts with an advantage. Nevertheless, the Westerner is strongly advised to study Oriental taboos before his arrival. Any violator of social customs will find himself rejected, no matter how fat his billfold or how lofty his position. The Oriental swain keeps his voice low; loud talking brands a man a boor. Oriental women are also offended by publicly offered love pats and other casual physical contacts that Western girls take for granted. In the Orient, a man does not touch a woman unless he means business--which ultimately charges the first caress with added electricity.

Marco Polo spent three years, going overland, to reach Cathay. The return trip, even though Marco had a swift-sailing junk, took another three years. But the modern explorer can cross the Pacific by jet in 12 hours. A first-class round-trip ticket (from the West Coast)--at about $2000--permits the traveler to visit the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Japan, with an optional stopover in the transplanted Oriental colonies of Hawaii.

The Philippine Republic offers an easy transition to Eastern mores. It is at once authentically Oriental and the most Westernized country in the East. The Spanish language, legacy of three and a half centuries of colonial rule, has almost disappeared, and virtually everybody the visitor is likely to meet speaks excellent English. In fact, the Philippines is the world's third-largest English-speaking country, after the United States and the United Kingdom.

After four centuries of persistent missionary activity, the topless fashions first reported by Magellan in 1521 are now found only among such forest tribes as the Bontoks around the mountain resort of Baguio, in northern Luzon. Taller and rosier than the lowland Filipinos, Bontok girls walk to market wearing nought but hand-woven loincloths. As teenagers, they live together in dormitories to study the ways of womanhood from experienced matrons. Regularly, (continued on page 284) Girls of the Orient (continued from page 186) however, the girls burst out of this cloistered life to enjoy daylong dances. A visitor who minds his manners and observes the taboos may well be invited 10 join them.

But most travelers find more interest in socializing than in anthropology, so they wisely gravitate to the cities. The sophisticated Filipina, especially in Manila, differs from her country cousin in nearly every way. She is as style-conscious as any woman in the Orient, for example, and much more likely to have sampled higher education. Many respected professions in the Philippines, such as pharmacy, are almost monopolized by females, and women are consulted on the biggest business deals.

But when the band starts playing, the Filipina files away her business acumen and reverts to the early island ways. She is the Orient's best dancer, just as the Filipino musician is the Orient's best jazzman. (From Hanoi to Honolulu, Filipino jazz bands dominate the Pacific stage.) In the tinikling dance, the Filipina imitates the movements of a dainty island bird as she adroitly skips between a rhythmically clapped pair of bamboo poles. Less exciting but more graceful than this Oriental edition of rope skipping is the candle dance, performed by a solitary girl with a lighted oil lamp on her head and one on the back of each hand. The music begins at a slow pace and gradually accelerates, until the dancer whirls in a miraculous spiral of coordination and balance.

In night clubs along Roxas Boulevard in Rizal, theoretically a suburb but actually a part of Greater Manila, the dancing is a good deal racier. Professional hostesses and girlish amateurs prove that Filipino skill at the tinikling carries over to the cha-cha, the mambo, the frug, the funky broadway or whatever the dance of the moment may be. The Bayside is the best known of the hostess houses and, unlike most such clubs, welcomes girls from the outside. Other night spots come and go in bewildering succession, but the very young have made a permanent establishment of the Safari, near the city's zoo. (The Safari, with no hostesses, is strictly bring-your-own.)

To woo the self-sufficient Filipina, the Westerner should remember that an orchid corsage, called a waling waling, is highly prized. The fashion-obsessed Filipina is flattered to be invited to the Sky Room at the jai alai arena, where formal dress is de rigueur--though a sensible island custom rules that formal dress for males in that sticky climate is the barong tagalog, a loose, embroidered shirt worn tieless and outside the trousers.

Southward from the Philippines sprawls the Indonesian Republic, approximately 3000 islands strewn across the vast reaches between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Except for a few Papuans in New Guinea and the jungle-clad islands of the East--the original Spice Islands that lined the first European traders to the Orient--Indonesians are of the same brown-skinned, Malayan-Polynesian stock as the Filipinos but with a larger admixture of foreign bloods.

Everywhere in Indonesia, girls delight the onlooker with their slight, graceful bodies, limpid eyes and delicate features--but as long as Bali remains unspoiled, the traveler should waste no time elsewhere. The Sundanese of west Java, amid the stunning mountain scenery of Bandung, are a fun-loving, colorfully clothed people, but the Balinese are just as merry--and only half clothed. While the Indonesian capital of Djakarta is a dismal shantytown, useful only for changing planes, Denpasar, one of the largest cities in Bali, could be the capital of paradise. Half-clad women vendors work in the market and. because they care more for conviviality than for commerce, spend most of their time languidly weaving palm leaves into fiesta decorations. A half-hour drive from Denpasar, in Ubud, a colony of foreign artists has introduced the bohemian West into the already relaxed Balinese moral climate. Girls train here, at the Ubud Ballet School, for the world-famed Balinese dance. During performances of the djoged bumbling, they pick a partner by coyly tapping his shoulder with a fan. But the male should beware, for that is the last touch permitted to either, at least for the duration of the dance. The partners try to outdo each other in enticing movements, but the trick is never to touch; for the Oriental ideal of love-making is ecstasy exquisitely prolonged. Too rapid a conquest might shatter the mood. After nightfall, the artists join the frolic and the groves buzz with whispers and giggling.

The lovely Balinese bosom is covered only for formal ceremonies. During daily routines, the girls prefer to work and play untrammeled by excessive clothing.

From the serene provincialism of Bali to the cacophonous cosmopolis of Singapore is less than a day's journ ey by air, counting the stopover in Djakarta. But it's a complete change of worlds. Singapore, at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, is the crossroads of the Orient and the West, and the streets bustle with Malay girls in sarongs, Indians in saris, Pakistanis in satin shalwar pajamas, Chinese in black samfoo costumes and ruddy, miniskirted Britons. Australians and New Zealanders. Singapore boasts the highest standard of living in the Orient, and its girls express their affluence in chic clothing, expensive jewelry and a general air of well-groomed prosperity.

The city-state's kaleidoscopic stream of mixed races and costumes provides exciting diversion for visitors sitting on the veranda of the venerable, fashionable Raffles Hotel. Singapore's sidewalk parade is fascinating; but, of course, the object is to meet one of the marchers. For the knowledgeable traveler who can match the girls' own worldly cool, there are many ways.

The Singapore Turf Club, for example, is the smartest in the Orient; everybody who is anybody haunts the track during the season. Fortunately, the Turf Club Town Office grants temporary membership to presentable-looking visitors, giving them a license to pick a winner among the fillies in the paddock--or at the club lounge. For dining and dancing, the same smart set favors the Arundel Room at the Goodwood Park Hotel, an 11-acre estate located across the street from the American Club--and a hangout for lone American girls looking for escorts. On Sundays the hotel offers an American-style barbecue that draws to the swimming pool some of Singapore's tastiest dishes.

A somewhat randier set frequents the Cockpit Hotel on Oxley Rise. The many languages of an international group of correspondents--and girls--blend into a soothing murmur at the hotel's Javanese version of rijistafel luncheons. And every evening, the beauties of a dozen nations demonstrate their native styles on the dance floor.

At Singapore's "girlie restaurants," pretty waitresses sit with customers, chat a weird but understandable pidgin, give sympathetic ear to the diner's troubles and offer advice--including, perhaps, an instant solution to his solitude. If midnight finds the visitor still alone, he can head for the Malai Kai food stalls on South Bridge Road. When the night spots close, young actresses from the floorshows flock to the stalls for a snack. The visitor's only problem then is telling the actresses from the elegant poules de luxe who also make the scene.

A short distance up the Malay Peninsula, a finger of Thailand probes southward toward Singapore. The capital, at Bangkok, lacks the dazzling scenery of Hong Kong or the bursting energy of Tokyo, but veterans of Asian travel keep coming back to the crazy, traffic-choked city. Why? Because of its girls. In Thai, the city's name--Krung Thep--appropriately means "City of Angels." Thai girls are plumper than most Asians, and their broad faces are lit by perpetual smiles. The Danes of the Orient, the Thais are eternally good-humored and hedonistic. The Thai girl is, however, highly sensitive and easily hurt. She will continue to smile sweetly after a man has as much as patted her shoulder in public, but will remove herself from his company at the earliest opportunity.

The Thai government supposedly has cracked down on Bangkok's once-wide-open vice world; but the puritanical ministers currently in power cannot really close down a town where the king himself (who went to Harvard) is a celebrated jazz clarinetist and where a leading air force officer owns a string of night clubs--including the swinging Moulin Rouge. The most sophisticated night spot in Bangkok is La Tropicana, in the Rama Hotel, where sedate temple dancers dramatize the languid postures of the classical Thai art. Jazzier are the goings on at the Whynot and other night spots run for the benefit of the American GIs. Mizu's Kitchen is thick with the bohemian atmosphere of a news correspondents' hangout.

A delightful Bangkok specialty is the massage by a monokini-clad masseuse. The girls insist that it is useless to wear a bra, since it falls oil' anyway during the exertions of the massage. The telephone number--advertised daily in the Bangkok Post--for ordering a "happy (bangkapi) massage by charming girls," in the privacy of your hotel room, is 58-556.

Except for over a half-million visitors sponsored by Uncle Sam, Vietnam is all but closed to prudent travelers. Saigon remains accessible, but the civilian tourist will wisely postpone his Vietnamese sojourn until the long-hoped-for end of the conflict. When peace comes, travelers will concur with the returning GIs and newsmen that the Vietnamese girl may be the loveliest creature on this planet. (Politics aside, what other country can boast two recent first ladies with the delicate sensuous beauty of Mesdames Nhu and Ky?) From the same racial stock as the Chinese, the Vietnamese have evolved into a slighter people with more refined features. The country's most beautiful women typically have lush, sensuous mouths and enormous, darkly appealing eyes. Rather narrow in the hips by world standards, Vietnamese girls nevertheless reveal wonderful curves in profile, a trait they nourish carefully by dressing in form-fitting and translucent ao dai tunics.

The world's most delightful welcoming committee greets passengers at Hong Kong's airport--a bevy of Chinese and Eurasian beauties introducing visitors to the fabled cheongsam, the high-collared, skintight, knee-length sheath dress split up the side to reveal a handsome slice of thigh. Chinese girls, especially those of the southern provinces around Hong Kong, have tiny feet and slender legs, among the shapeliest in the world. Fully conscious of their seducive appeal, the girls don't hesitate to exploit it. The best-formed girls of ten fit the cheongsam's slit with a zipper, so that they can vary their exposure to accommodate their company and mood.

Old-time Chinese parents frown on the mixing of East and West, but tens of thousands of lush Eurasians, combining the best of both worlds, prove that somehow mixed couples can get together for more than a cup of tea. Also, as the entrepôt for the Far East, Hong Kong--like Singapore--has attracted girls from many nations, all of whom have absorbed the sexual ambiance of the Orient.

In the Cellar Bar of the Ambassador Hotel in Kowloon, across the bay from Hong Kong island, excitement-seeking males will find similarly inclined females, both Western and Oriental. The nearby President Hotel, despite its very proper appearance, is one vast playground. Elsewhere in the city. Maxim's Restaurant glitters with glamor girls at the cocktail hour. And the pool and beach of the Hong Kong Hotel at Repulse Bay teem with daughters, wives and mistresses of the colony's wealthiest businessmen. Along the Wanchai waterfront--in the now-legendary world of Suzie Wong--girls by the thousands dedicate their youth to making men happy. At the Luk Kwok Hotel, where The World of Suzie Wong was written, the desk clerk blandly assumes that you want a double bed. Why else would you register at Suzie's place?

In Hong Kong ballrooms, only tea and hostesses are served. Wong Choy was the first dance hall in town, but now more than 80 offer scores of girls to entertain the wanderer. Headmistresses issue patrons a menu describing the delectable dishes of the house. At Kam Fun Chee--the Golden Phoenix--the card says:

Bik Kwan speaks Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, English; is beautiful, very sophisticated, a smart dresser.

Lok Wai has a pretty face with big round eyes; very fragile and Oriental.

Lee Mun is voluptuous; a happy-go-lucky good-time girl.

Yuo Mun is a north Chinese beauty with fine facial bone structure; soft-spoken, refined manner.

Wealthy Chinese patronize the ballrooms regularly. Since the most popular girls make in the neighborhood of $1000 monthly just by being pleasant and flattering to well-heeled tea drinkers, they can well afford off-duty independence.

Two hours by hydrofoil from Hong Kong lie the six square miles of Portuguese Macao. For generations, this tiny outpost of Europe has been the setting for lurid novels about rampant vice. Sensationalizing hacks have written of naked Eurasian girls displayed in bamboo cages at public intersections for the edification of pedestrians. If that picture was ever true, it's not now. The cages are gone, but in their stead is the overhanging threat of a Chinese take-over. Despite its nominal Portuguese role, the colony is all but controlled by mainland interests. Politics permitting, the American visitor on the crowded streets of Macao will rind that passing girls look subtly different horn the Chinese in Hong Kong. They are the expected mixture of Portuguese and Chinese, of course, but early settlers imported Malay concubines and their blood also shows in many Macaoans. The local dialect even borrows many Malay words.

For 50 years, the Japanese ruled the island of Taiwan (Formosa), now the seat of Nationalist China; accordingly, a major social institution in Taiwan, even more than in Hong Kong (where the Japanese ruled only briefly), is the modern edition of the geisha house--there called a wine house. The biggest of these--with 150 hostesses--is Tung Yuan Kuo in the capital of Taipei; but the prettiest and liveliest girls are at Pai Yu Lou. Nine miles north of Taipei lies the extraordinary resort of Peitou, famed throughout the Orient as Happy Hot Springs. Fifty inns preserve the Japanese custom of mixed communal bathing, and a corps of the prettiest call-girls in the East responds to summonses on motor scooters. Anything goes in Peitou, even at the comparatively austere Mayflower Hotel, the only Oriental inn rated deluxe by the guidebooks.

In Korea, as in Taiwan, a half century of Nipponese influence has left its mark. The equivalent of the geisha house there is called the kisaeng house, and the hostesses are called by the Japanese word for girl, musume, corrupted, naturally, to "mooses" by American GIs. At the Blue Cloud and the Daiha in Seoul, the mooses have acquired a taste for Western music and dancing. Korean hostesses are even more independent than the girls of other Oriental countries, for Korean girls have always enjoyed a high status.

To lure tourists, the government has built a complex of kisaeng houses, night clubs, restaurants and hotels on Seoul's Walker Hill, which overlooks the Han river. Of special interest to male visitors, 13 detached hotel bungalows offer maximum privacy to the lucky man who has bagged his moose.

By starting his Oriental loop in Manila, the foresighted traveler not only eases gradually into Oriental culture but saves the best for last. As everyone knows, Japan boasts girls of exquisite beauty and pleasing manner; beyond that, it is a liberated, sexually joyful country, where the only sins seem to be dancing after the band quits at midnight and failing to take off one's slippers before entering a bedroom.

Nudity means nothing to Japanese girls. In hot weather, they often forsake their bras, no matter how transparent their blouses. Old-style communal bathing has been banned from metropolitan centers--supposedly in deference to Western prudery--but the custom lingers in remote resort hotels, such as the inns in Beppu on the Inland Sea; the Akan Kanko in Hokkaido; and the Fuki-nuki at Gamagori, where the community bath is the most tastefully decorated room in the house. (Men protect their modesty by adroit use of a tiny hand towel: but girls, with a more widely distributed problem, find their towels re-vealingly inadequate.) Even in Tokyo, bath arrangements are refreshing in every sense by Western standards. In public bathhouses, svelte teenaged girls clad only in panties and bras attend male patrons, helping them disrobe, scrubbing them in the O-buros(which accommodate as many as 100 bathers) and massaging them afterward. In the well-known five-story Tokyo Onsen, two girls attend each patron--but hanky-panky is prohibited. Bathhouses in the Shinjuku district-home of the Japanese hippies and an incredibly lively entertainment area--are considerably less restrictive.

Curiously, though the Japanese consider mixed public nudity an unremarkable state, since World War Two they have developed an insatiable taste for the art of the striptease. Much of Japan's after-dark, entertainment features the gradual removal of clothing by girls who would think little of bathing au naturel--with you and perhaps Kit) others. At the Papagayo night club (serving Mexican food), the show is continuous, nude and electrically erotic. On Saturday and Wednesday, the Monte Carlo puts on bathtub reviews, at which the girls relinquish even the flimsy protection of a G string. And every third house in the gangster-riddled night-life district of Asakusa puts on a strip show for an almost-all-Japanese clientele.

For ages, Japanese custom has kept the wife at home while the husband roamed. But a Japanese would as soon belt down three fingers of kerosene in a broom closet as drink his sake alone at a bar. Thus, centuries ago, he invented the geisha girl, a professional companion whose role is to amuse, flatter and entertain lonely males. Though not originally a prostitute, the geisha typically keeps her eye open for an attractive, wealthy protector--and turns on her considerable charms when she finds him. An apprentice geisha, called a maiko wears her hair in an elaborate style indicating that she has no protector yet and hence is still a virgin. It is a proud day when she resets her hair to show that her status has changed.

Old-timers still patronize the geisha, but her arts are too subtle for most Westerners and Westernized Japanese, who want more out of an evening than a few weepy ballads and a wild game of cat's cradle. Accordingly, the Japanese hostess--imitating the geisha in the delicate arts and surpassing her in the basics--has emerged. At the Club Tami, for instance. Madam Tami-san herself carefully matches patrons with lovely hostesses, who volunteer to play games somewhat more adult than cat's cradle--such as strip dice or a half dozen other novelties.

Abounding with hostesses, the Ginza is a neon-lighted jungle of bars and cabarets. In the Akasaka and the Asakusa sections, on opposite sides of town, night life is virtually the only industry. Even in the relatively provincial city of Osaka, the Metro offers 1001 hostesses under one roof. Many of them are from nearby Kobe, home of what Americans consider the prettiest of Japanese girls. The Japanese themselves prefer the northern girls from the Tohoku district, which becomes a convenient difference of opinion at Tokyo's Queen Bee, where Westerners are segregated on a different floor from Japanese. All patrons sit at revolving bars to look over the hostesses as though browsing over a smorgasbord. Westerners are offered mostly Kobe kewpies, while the Japanese pick over Tohokuans.

A resourceful male does not have to depend entirely on professional entertainers. Around the pool at the Akasaka Prince Hotel, fashion models gather to sun themselves and keep their figures trim by actually taking a swim now and then. Foreign and Japanese students, eager to practice English, stay at the Hill-top Hotel. (The Nikkatsu Hotel downtown and the Diamond Hotel behind the British embassy are more understanding in their rental policies than the prim Imperial.)

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Before anxious Western males embark for Tokyo or Taiwan, they should be advised of a few things. First, be not deceived, by the Oriental girl's demure demeanor, into thinking she is an easy mark. Oriental girls well understand their tremendous appeal to Western men and use it artfully to defend themselves in a sometimes hostile male world. Their favors must be wooed and won by the same masculine style and charm preferred by the girls back home. Second, though it is convenient for Americans and Europeans to call the Orient the Far East, the Asians themselves prefer to call it the Orient. They rightly insist, on their home grounds, that they are not east of anywhere. And, finally, many Oriental girls will not have the facility with English that Oriental men possess. But girlhood training makes them exquisitely sensitive to a male's slightest change of mood--and they are eager to please. So clever are they at the subtle art of flattery that a man can finish an evening beside a girl who knows not a word of English and leave with the impression that they have been conversing gaily--because Oriental girls talk a universal tongue that can dazzle men of any nationality. The language of love has always produced meaningful dialog; and in the Orient, it is spoken more fluently than anywhere else in the world.