User:CWH/Chinese Characteristics

Chinese Characteristics is a book of essays by the American missionary Arthur Henderson Smith first published in Shanghai in 1890, then a revised version in London, Glasgow, and New York in 1894. Smith, a missionary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, arrived in China in 1871 and took up residence in Pangjiazhuang, a village in Shandong, where he stayed until the Boxer Uprising of 1900. Each of the chapters, most of which were first published as articles in the North China Herald, is devoted to a particular "characteristic," such as "Solidarity," "Face," "Absence of Nerves," "Peaceableness," "Politeness," and "Industry."

Chinese Characteristics became the most widely read American book on China until at least the 1920s, perhaps until Pearl Buck's The Good Earth replaced it in 1931. It was translated into Japanese soon after its 1894 publication, then from Japanese into Chinese. The book drew strong responses from prominent Chinese intellectuals such as Gu Hongming and Lu Xun in the early twentieth century. In the late twentieth century there was an "Arthur Smith" fever in which it was translated into Chinese at least three more times. By 2014 there were at least 29 Chinese editions and dozens of articles examining it.

Publication history
Smith published a series of articles in the North China Daily News, which were reprinted in the first edition of 1890. editions in 1892 and 1894 in London, New York, and Edinburgh, with major cuts amounting to 14 chapters of some 100,000 words from the earlier edition. The 1894 edition was the most widely circulated and translated.

Structure and content
The 1890 first edition has thirty-nine chapters, while the 1894 edition, subsequently reprinted many times, has twenty-seven.

The first chapter is "Face." Face

Several chapters are devoted to characteristics that Smith declares that Chinese lack: "Absence of Nerves" XXVI. The Absence of Public Spirit XXXIV. The Absence of Sympathy, XXXVII. The Absence of Sincerity, XXXVIII. The Absence of Altruism. The characteristics that Smith felt the Chinese lacked, remarks one historian, are ones that respectable middle-class Americans of the time emphasized and used to describe themselves.

Reactions and critics
The New York Times reviewed the 1894 first American edition, saying the volume is "a highly entertaining one, showing uncommon shrewdness, with a keen analysis of character, but on the whole, it is not favorable to the Chinese." Perhaps, the review suggested, the missionary feels a "certain amount of chagrin, seeing how futile have been his well-meant efforts for the conversion of the heathen."

Early twentieth century Chinese intellectuals read the 18?? translation, and challenged, ridiculed, and absorbed Smith's views. Gu Hongming, for instance  while the pre-eminent New Culture period intellectual, Lu Xun offered congratulations on the publication of a new translation in

The sociologist Pan Guangdan translated fifteen of Smith's twenty-seven chapters to include in a 1937 volume of his own essays, Minzu texing yu minzu weisheng (民族 特性 与 民族 卫生 Racial characteristics and racial hygiene). He argued for eugenics, urging educated and intelligent Chinese to increase their birth-rate and improve Chinese people's health by increasing the number of people who were genetically superior, using Smith's chapters "Absence of Nerves" and "Disregard of Accuracy" and "Absence of Public Spirit" to show the selfish, unscientific, face-loving, "Chinese Everyman" who weakened the Chinese race.

Western scholars found Smith's book a convenient source of illustration of foreign images of China. Harold Isaacs, for instance, devoted several pages to Smith's views in his 1958 study, Scratches on Our Minds. He commented that Smith XXX YYY ZZZ

Historians use the book to illustrate the attitudes of

Another pointed to Smith's use of humor to expose Western reaction to Chinese food.

A more recent historian used Smith to illustrate Western misunderstanding that Chinese had no respect for "facts," that Smith

In the late twentieth century, Chinese intellectuals conducted an extensive debate on Smith and his evaluation of Chinese cultural identity. The scholar Yang Hui found that from 1991 to 2014 at least 29 editions appeared, inspiring dozens of articles. The 1894 edition was reprinted in the D'Asia Vue series in 2003, with an Introduction by Lydia H. Liu, who surveyed the Chinese critical response.

Editions

 * Hathi Trust Online HERE
 * Available at Internet Archive here. Hathi Trust here; Google Books Here