The last foreign devil to depart from the Middle Kingdom was a blond 
Victorian gentleman with gray eyes, who stood in the waves for some time 
looking back over Pudong before he turned around and continued his descent. As 
the sea rose over him, it lifted the bowler from his head, and the hat 
continued to bob on the tide for some minutes as the Chinese detonated strings 
of firecrackers on the shore and tiny shreds of the red paper wrappers drifted 
over the sea like cherry petals.