August 8, 2020. Drawing on Arthur H. Smith’s nineteenth-century observations of China, Seki Hei contrasts the Confucian virtues of righteousness, propriety and wisdom with what Smith described as indifference toward public property, ritual centered on “face,” and a lack of concern for numerical precision. This chapter records Seki Hei’s severe criticism of the gap between proclaimed ideals and social practice.

2020-08-08
【The Absence of Public Spirit】
What, then, of “righteousness”?
Smith observes, in substance, that whether individually or collectively, people show little concern or responsibility for what happens to public property so long as they themselves suffer no personal loss, and that even the very conception of something such as a road belonging to “the public” is alien to the society he was observing.
As Smith points out, there is a lack of public spirit.
Society and the public realm are regarded as matters of little personal concern.
Rather, taking what can be taken is given priority.
Smith further observes that people not only fail to concern themselves with what belongs to the public, but that unprotected and usable public property becomes an object of theft.
He describes paving stones being carried away for private use and bricks disappearing gradually from the surfaces of city walls.
In other words, in the society Smith describes, what belongs to “the public” itself becomes something to be taken.
【Courtesy and “Face”】
Next comes “courtesy.”
The Chinese have traditionally attached great importance to etiquette.
They emphasize hierarchical relations between elder and younger, and elaborate ceremonial forms, such as repeated kneeling and prostration, have long existed.
Smith, however, makes the following observation.
He compares politeness to an air cushion: there may be nothing inside it, yet it can greatly soften a shock.
He also describes seemingly endless Chinese banquets, at which an extraordinary quantity and variety of dishes continue to be served.
What appears insufficiently long to the Chinese host, he says, may become a source of fear and despair to a foreign guest.
The serving of enormous quantities of food, in this interpretation, is not necessarily governed by whether the guest actually wants to eat them.
It becomes a means of demonstrating the host’s own position and influence.
Smith makes a similar observation concerning ceremonial visits.
He describes social calls without clear limits, in which a guest may continue talking until exhausted unless the host actually proposes that he remain for the night.
He also remarks upon visitors who seem unable to appreciate the existence and value of time, sitting for hours without taking the initiative to leave.
Taken together, these observations suggest that what is called “courtesy” can function less as consideration for the other person than as a technique for maintaining one’s own “face.”
Smith likewise connects outward behavior repeatedly with the question of “face.”
He argues that, particularly in large cities, much of the outward politeness displayed by Chinese employees toward foreign employers may amount only to a surface veneer.
【Knowledge and Accuracy】
Next comes “wisdom.”
The Chinese, of course, also place importance upon knowledge.
At the same time, however, Smith argues that exactness and precision are not always pursued.
He describes expressions such as hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands being used without concern for greater numerical precision.
It is indeed reminiscent of the world expressed by the phrase “white hair three thousand zhang.”
Numbers consequently become remarkably approximate and broad.
From this, I concluded at the time that technological innovation and genuinely scientific thinking were unlikely to emerge from China.
To be continued.