benumbing effect of such a religion as has in great
part made them what they are.

From The Living Church.

That this is the most valuable account of the Chinese ever written is, we
believe, generally acknowledged.

From The Missionary Review of the World.

Every chapter is a thesaurus of startling antithesis, humorous
portraitures, acute observation and marvelous sagacity.... The book is
most delightful reading, and will be found most fascinating. It is a
mirror of Chinese characteristics, as its name indicates. Within its pages
we have found a volume of aphorisms and sage sayings seldom embraced in
such a book.--_Rev. A. T. Pierson, D.D._

_FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 63 Washington Street
Toronto: 154 Yonge Street_

[Illustration: CHINESE VILLAGERS AT HOME]

Village Life in China

A STUDY IN SOCIOLOGY

BY ARTHUR H. SMITH, D.D.

AUTHOR OF
"Chinese Characteristics"

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell Company
Publishers of Evangelical Literature

Copyright, 1899
by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

Foreword

These chapters are written from the standpoint of one who, by an extended
experience in China, has come to feel a profound respect for the numerous
admirable qualities of the Chinese, and to entertain for many of them a
high personal esteem. An unexampled past lies behind this great race, and
before it there may lie a wonderful future. Ere that can be realized,
however, there are many disabilities which must be removed. The longer one
is acquainted with China, the more deeply is this necessity felt.
Commerce, diplomacy, extension of political relations, and the growing
contact with Occidental civilization have, all combined, proved totally
inadequate to accomplish any such reformation as China needs.

The Chinese village is the empire in small, and when that has been
surveyed, we shall be in a better condition to suggest a remedy for
whatever needs amendment. It cannot be too often reiterated that the
variety in unity in China is such, that affirmations should always be
qualified with the implied limitation that they are true somewhere,
although few of them may hold good everywhere. On the other hand, the
unity in variety is such that a really typical Chinese fact, although of
restricted occurrence, may not on that account be the less valuable.

China was never so much