Chinese Characteristics (1894) was the most widely read American work on China until Pearl Bucks 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. Indeed, the Chinese edition(s) of Chinese Characteristics have never gone out of print in China. Lu Xun, the most prominent Chinese cultural critic of the early twentieth century, urged his students to study and ponder Smiths message, which was very widely debated in Chinese student circles. Within the last decade (the 1990s), two different, new translations of Smiths book were published in China and both editions have enjoyed wide distribution and readership. In the West, particularly since World War II, Chinese Characteristics has been widely quoted (though seldom read) as an example of Sino-myopia and Orientalism. Despite such Western pseudo-intellectual bias, Smiths arguments retain the power to provoke critical introspection among Chinese and, for the honest, among Westerners as well.

Smith, Arthur H. (Arthur Henderson), 1845-1932

Arthur Henderson Smith

Missionary Experience in Asia, The

Norwalk: EastBridge

Signature Books

Marston

D'Asia vu reprint library, Norwalk, New York State, 2003

White Plains, N.Y. EastBridge ; Abingdon, 2003

D'Asia vu reprint library, Norwalk, 2002

United States, United States of America

2003-03-01

viii, 342 pages : 23 cm

2023-06-28