Since my knowledge of early-20th century culture comes almost exclusively from detective novels, here’s some Agatha Christie to illustrate:

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I got up and took from my desk where it always accompanied me a photograph of my favourite Chinese picture. It represents an old man sitting beneath a tree playing cat’s cradle with a piece of string on his fingers and toes.

‘It was in the Chinese exhibition,’ I said. ‘It fascinated me. Allow me to introduce you. It is called “Old Man enjoying the Pleasure of Idleness”.’

Aimeé Griffith was unimpressed by my lovely picture. She said: ‘Oh well, we all know what the Chinese are like!’

[a little later]

When Joanna and Megan came back from their walk I showed Megan my Chinese picture. Her face lighted up. She said, ‘it’s heavenly, isn’t it?’
‘That _is_ rather my opinion.’
Her forehead was crinkling in the way I knew so well.
‘But it would be difficult, wouldn’t it?’
‘To be idle?’
‘No, not to be idle — but to enjoy the pleasures of it. You’d have to be very old —’
She paused. I said: ‘He _is_ an old man.’
‘I don’t mean old that way. Not _age_. I mean old in — in…’
‘You mean,’ I said, ‘that one would have to attain a very high state of civilization for the thing to present itself to you in that way — a fine point of sophistication? I think I shall complete your education, Megan, by reading to you one hundred poems translated from the Chinese.’

[Those two characters end up married]

—

Of course, there was another stereotype of the Chinese current at the time, which Christie employed in the novel The Big Four. But that seems to be a pastiche of Sax Rohmer and his Fu Manchu, whereas The Moving Finger, which I quoted above, is one of Christie’s most delicate and touching mysteries. (There’s another mystery for me, associated with the novel, which I won’t go into).

The picture the character in my extract is not invented for the novel, she mentions it in her autobiography:

“So what I plan to do is to enjoy the pleasures of memory—not hurrying myself—writing a few pages from time to time. It is a task that will probably go on for years. But why do I call it a task? It is an indulgence.

“I once saw an old Chinese scroll that I loved. It featured an old man sitting under a tree playing cat’s cradle. It was called ‘Old Man enjoying the pleasures of Idleness.’ I’ve never forgotten it.”