Arthur Henderson Smith
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Arthur Henderson Smith (July 18, 1845 – August 31, 1932) was a missionary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions famous for spending 54 years as a missionary in China and writing books which presented China to foreign readers. These books include Chinese Characteristics, Village Life in China and The Uplift of China. In the 1920s, Chinese Characteristics was still the most widely read book on China among foreign residents there.
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[edit] Biography
He was born in Vernon, Connecticut, served as a soldier in the Civil War before graduating from Beloit College, then briefly attended Andover Theological Seminary before taking a degree from Union Theological Seminary. After marrying Emma Jane Dickinson, he was ordained into the Congregational ministry. The couple sailed for to China in 1872. They then established themselves at Pangjiazhuang, a village in Shandong, where they stayed until the Boxer Uprising, which did not harm their establishment.
Famous Chinese author Lu Xun has written that he was influenced by Smith's Chinese Characteristics, which was translated into Chinese, as well as Japanese and several European languages. He is remembered for speaking out against the Chinese practice of killing baby girls and drawing attention to this problem that was often ignored, even among other missionaries[1].
[edit] Works by Smith
- Arthur H. Smith, Chinese Characteristics (New York: Revell, 1894). Reprinted: EastBridge, D'Asia Vue, with a Preface by Lydia Liu, 2003. ISBN 1891936263.
———. Village Life in China; a Study in Sociology. New York, Chicago [etc.]: F. H. Revell Company, 1899. Various reprints.
- ___ China in Convulsion. New York,: F. H. Revell Co., 1901.
———. Proverbs and Common Sayings from the Chinese, Together with Much Related and Unrelated Matter, Interspersed with Observations on Chinese Things in General. New York, 1914. Reprint, Paragon 1965.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Mungello, David (2008). Drowning Girls in China. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780742555310. p. 73
[edit] References
- http://www.beloit.edu/~libhome/Archives/acoll/alum/ahsmith.html
- Theodore D. Pappas, “Arthur Henderson Smith and the American Mission in China,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 70.3 (Spring 1987): 163-186.
- Charles Hayford, “Chinese and American Characteristics: Arthur H. Smith and His China Book,' in S.W. Barnett, JK Fairbank, Ed., Christianity in China: Early Protestant Missionary Writings (Harvard 1985).
- Myron Cohen, Introduction to a paperback reprint, Village Life in China (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970).
- Lydia Liu,”Translating National Character: Lu Xun and Arthur Smith,” Ch 2, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity: China 1900-1937 (Stanford 1995). Shows how Chinese nationalists made use of Smith's Chinese Characteristics which had been quickly translated into Japanese, thence into Chinese.
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