Chinese characteristics
Within the past thirty years, the Chinese have made themselves a factor in the. affairs of many lands. He is seen to be irrepressible; it felt to be incomprehensible. He cannot, indeed, be rightly understood in any country but China, yet the impression still prevails that he is a bundle of contradictions who cannot be understood at all.
But after all, there is no apparent reason now that several hundred years of our acquaintance with China have elapsed, why what is actually known of its people should not be co-ordinated, as well as any other combination of complex phenomena. A more serious objection to this particular volume is that the author has no adequate qualifications for writing it.
The circumstance that a person has lived for eighteen years in China is no more a guarantee that he is competent to write of the characteristics of the Chinese, than the fact that another man has for eighteen years been buried in a silver mine, is proof that he is a fit person to compose a treatise on metallurgy, or on bi-metallism. China is a vast whole, and one who has never even visited more than half its provinces, and who has lived in but two of them is certainly not entitled to generalize for the whole Empire. These papers were originally prepared for the North-China Daily News of Shanghai, with no reference to any wider circulation.
Content:
introduction
I. Unity in Variety — Variety in Unity ... 6
II. Solidarity 9
III. Social Solidarity .'. 12
IV. Face IS
V. The Faculty of Absorbing 18
VI. Eating 22
VII. Economy 26
VIII. Hunger tor Gain and Thirst for Fame ... 33
IX'. Industry $6
X. Credulity ... ... 42
XL Peaceableness 46
' XII. Social Typhoons ... 49
XIII. The Dread of Giving Offence 57
XIV. Politeness 63
XV. Benevolence 68
XVI. The Disregard of Time ..., 74
XVII. The Disregard of Accuracy 78
XVIII. The Talent for Misunderstanding 86
XIX. The Talent for Indirection 91
XX. Flexible Inflexibility 98
XXI. Parasitism 105
XXII. The Absence of Nerves in
XXIII. Disregard of Foundations n8
XXIV. Contempt for. Foreigners 124
XXV. Intellectual Turbidity 131
XXVI. The Absence of Public Spirit 138
XXVII. Inability to conserve Tangible Memorials of the Past ..' » 145
XXVIII. Conservatism 151
XXIX. Indifference to Comfort and Convenience 160
XXX. Patience and Perseverance 177
XXXI. Physical Vitality 186
XXXII. Employment of Intermediaries 193
XXXIII. Filial Piety 201
XXXIV. The Absence of Sympathy 214
XXXV. Mutual Responsibility and Respect for, Law
XXXVI. Mutual Suspicion
XXXVII. The Absence of Sincerity
XXXVIII. The Absence of Altruism
XXXIX. Polytheism; Pantheism; Atheism...
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