The article is devoted to the problem of the national character in the play East of Suez by W.S. Maugham. The author is primarily interested both in the English and the Chinese, and the half-blood people (e.g. Daisy Anderson). Maugham pays attention to the decay of moral standards in the Orient: the betrayal of friendship, the curse of the secrets from the past, the corruption of the English by the East. We analyze the character of Daisy Anderson and come to the conclusion about her twofaced nature: her outward is opposite to her inner life (she is corrupt, selfish, untruthful, perfidious). Our purpose is to analyze a complex and contradictory character of Daisy, who is a representative of two cultures: her Asian is determines by birth (her mother is a Chinese woman), her European is related to the upbringing (her father brought her like an English lady). The methodology of our study is a complex of biographical and intertextual methods and a literary analysis. Thus we come to the conclusions that, firstly, Maugham confirms the prejudice of the stereotype that both the Asians (Amah, Lee Tai Cheng) and the half-blood people (daisy) are immoral and deceitful. Secondly, the author shows the Englishmen (Henry Anderson, George Conway, Harold Knox, Sylvia Knox) with their sense of superiority, the decay of moral standards in the Orient, and the Asians (Amah, Lee Tai Cheng) with the domination of instincts in their characters, and a half-blood woman (Daisy). Finally, W.S. Maugham proves that Daisy has been crowded by China upon her.
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