China Under the Search-Light

First published in 1901, this book offers an introduction to Chinese culture and civilisation as perceived by a British missionary.

William Arthur Cornaby (Author)

9781108014113, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 3 June 2010

268 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.5 cm, 0.35 kg

A London-born Wesleyan Methodist missionary, William Arthur Cornaby (1860–1921) spent over thirty years in China, where he edited The Chinese Christian Review, and, from 1905, the Ta Tung Pao, a weekly magazine targeted at Chinese officials and scholars. His many books on Chinese culture and civilisation, including A String of Chinese Peach-Stones (1895) and Rambles in Central China (1896), provide detailed sketches of Chinese rural life and customs. The later China Under the Search-Light, first published in 1901, uses Western clichés about China as a point of departure to offer a more nuanced understanding of the underlying facts and problems specific to Chinese society. In this book, Cornaby discusses contemporary topics such as overcrowding in Shanghai, mandarins, and Buddhism. He also scrutinises newspapers, novels, and aesthetic traditions, offering an elementary introduction to Chinese culture as perceived by a nineteenth-century British missionary.

1. Introductory chapter
2. Over-crowding
3. Solidarity
4. Humanity in bundles
5. Dead-levels
6. Ruts
7. The 'Native Foreigner'
8. Some actors in the tragedy of 1900
9. Mandarindom
10. The land of aesthetic traditions
11. The triple language of China
12. A Chinese bookstall
13. A daily newspaper.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]