Meeting+the+Manchu

Kloster Kristina.
 * Why Kitty was so interested in meeting the Manchu? What was she looking for? Did the meeting help to her to find it? How do you understand the title? **

I have red the wonderful novel "The painted veil" by Somerset Maugham. This story about one lady and her social background. Kitty was nice lady, but harum-scarum. She liked dancing and playing. Her serious husband seemed to her boring and uninteresting. She never thought about the meaning of her life. B ut her views are changed when she arrived with her husband in Mei-tan-fu. It was a town wherea cholera epidemic has killed many people. She realized that her past life was meaningless. She wanted to be helpful to someone, that's why she began to help the sisters in the convent. Kitty has met a very interesting man in Mei-tan-fu, his name was Waddington.But Kitty was so impressed when she knew about Manchu, Waddington`s woman. Manchu was slim in her long embroidered gown and some what taller than Kitty, used to the Southern people, had expected. She wore a jacket of pale green silk with tight sleeves that came over her wrists and on her black hair, elaborately dressed, was the head-dress of the Manchu women. Her face was coated with powder and her cheeks from the eyes to the mouth heavily rouged; her plucked eyebrows were a thin dark line and her mouth was scarlet. From this mask her black, slightly slanting, large eyes burned like lakes of liquid jet. She seemed more like an idol than a woman. Her movements were slow and assured. Kitty had the impression that she was slightly shy but very curious. Kitty noticed her hands; they were preternaturally long, very slender, of the colour of ivory; and the exquisite nails were painted. Kitty thought she had never seen anything so lovely as those languid and elegant hands.Waddington sent her home several times, but she always returned to him. When Kitty and Waddington, a little later, were walking up the hill together, he asked Kitty Why did she want to see Manchu. Kitty hesitated for a moment before answering, that she was looking for something and she did not quite know what it is. But she knew that it's very important for her to know it, and if Kitty did it would make all the difference. Perhaps the nuns knew it; when she was with them Kitty felt that they hold a secret .Kitty didn't know why it came into her head that if I saw this Manchu woman She should have an inkling of what She was looking for. Perhaps she would tell her if she could. Kitty was looking the path,but not the path that kind funny old Waddington had spoken of that led nowhither, but the path those dear nuns at the convent followed so humbly, the path that led to peace. The title of the novel contains the whole essence of that message to us by the author. The title is taken from Percy Bysshe Shelley's sonnet which begins "Lift not **the** **painted** **veil** which those who live call Life. Author compares our lives to the theater. As Kitty is a front-row witness to death, she observes the veil that lifts when life leaves a body several times. Most poetically is her own veil, lifted to experience a life so different from the superficial one she had expected. But the author believes everyone has his own way and do not lift the curtain of life