From the book It was once thought that with Western inventions China could be taken by storm. Knives, forks, stockings, and pianos were shipped to China from England, under the impression that this Empire was about to be 'Europeanised'. If there ever had been a time when the Chinese Empire was to be taken by storm in this way, that time would have been long ago, but there never was such a time. China is not a country, and Chinese are not the people, to be taken by storm with anything whatsoever. The only way to secure the solid and permanent respect of the Chinese race for Western people as a whole by convincing object lessons, showing that Christian civilisation in the mass and in detail accomplishes results which cannot be matched by the civilisation which already possesses. If this conviction cannot be produced, the Chinese will continue, and not without reason, to feel and to display in all their relation to foreigners both condescension and contempt. . . . Chinese customs, like the Chinese language, have become established in some way to us unknown. Customs, like human speech, once established resist change. But the conditions under which Chinese customs and language crystallized into shape are in no two places exactly the same. Hence we have those perplexing variations of usage indicated in the common proverb that customs differ every ten miles. Hence, too, we have the bewildering dialects. When once the custom or the dialect has become fixed, it resembles plaster-of-Paris which has set, and while it may be broken, it cannot be changed. . . . Keywords: Chinese Characteristics, Arthur H. Smith, ZWestern Inventions China, England, empire, lessons, Christian civilisation, foreigns, language, crystallized, perplexing,

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