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 last decade (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 II, Chinese Characteristics has been widely quoted (though seldom read) as an 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.

编辑推荐：自从那位喜欢说大话的威尼斯商人在热那亚监狱里口述了一本游记，700年间西方探险家、传教士、商人、水手、政客、学者，形形色色的人写过各种各样的关于中国的报道。有写实，有虚构；有不着边际的赞美，也有不怀好意的污蔑。有这难以计数的“中国著述”中，真正有影响的，不过那么几本。美国作家亚瑟·亨·史密斯所著的本书就是其中之一。作为美国排行榜的畅销书，本书从作者理解中的中国人的性格入手，真实的、全面的