ON A CHINESE SCREEN<i> By W. Somerset Maugham (Paragon House: $10.95)</i>

The brief vignettes and sketches Somerset Maugham wrote during his travels in 1919-1921 evoke the nostalgic China of “old China hands,” replete with rickshaws, coolies and singsing girls. The author displays remarkably little curiosity about the Chinese people or their way of life, and his descriptions of landscapes seem more vivid than his portraits of the humans who inhabit those vistas. Far more satisfying are the accounts of the follies and foibles of the British diplomats and expatriates who stubbornly ignore the native culture and labor to create little enclaves of Chelsea and Soho in Asia.