Chinese Characteristics by Arthur Henderson Smith

Chinese Characteristics by Arthur Henderson Smith

Chinese Characteristics (1894) was the most widely read American work on China until Pearl Buck's The Good Earth (1931). It was the first to take up the task of analyzing Chinese society in the light of scientific social and racial theory.

Written as a series of pungent and sometimes comic essays for a Shanghai newspaper in the late 1880s, Chinese Characteristics was among the five most read books on China among foreigners living in China as late as World War I and it was read by Americans at home as a wise and authentic handbook. The book was quickly translated into Japanese and just as quickly into Chinese. It was accepted by the Chinese -- and has maintained its authoritative status for over a century -- as the quintessential portrait of the Chinese race drawn by a Westerner.

Lu Xun, the most prominent Chinese cultural critic of the early twentieth century, urged his students to study and ponder Smith's message, which was very widely debated in Chinese student circles. Within the 1990s two different, new translations of Smith's book were published in China and both editions have enjoyed wide distribution and readership. In the West, particularly since World War I, Chinese Characteristics has been widely quoted (though seldom read) as a purported example of Sino-myopia and Orientalism. Despite such Western pseudo-intellectual bias, Smith's arguments retain the power to provoke critical introspection among Chinese and, for the honest, among Westerners as well.

Smith, Arthur H.: - Arthur H. Smith, D.D., was born in Vernon, Connecticut and graduated from Beloit College before serving with the Wisconsin infantry for a few months during the Civil War. A college friend called Smith an accomplished storyteller and the funniest man I ever knew. After he attended Andover Theological Seminary, in 1872 the American Board of the Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent him and his wife, Emma Jane Dickenson, to China. They lived in the north China village of Panjiazhuang for several decades, aspiring to fit in as natives. Arthur Smith steeped himself in Chinese classical literature and folklore, leading to a stream of articles and books, including Proverbs and Common Sayings from the Chinese (1886; 1916); Village Life in China: A Study in Sociology (1899); and China in Convulsion (1901), a two-volume study of the Boxer Uprising.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781015439283
ISBN 10	1015439284
Title	Chinese Characteristics
Author	Arthur Henderson Smith
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Legare Street Press
Year published	2022-10-26
Number of pages	384
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.