August 9, 2020. Drawing on the writings of nineteenth-century American missionary Arthur H. Smith, Seki Hei examines trust, truth, falsehood, and mutual distrust in Chinese society. Through Smith’s observations of conversation, social customs, and traditional sayings, the essay considers the role of trust as a foundation of social life.

August 9, 2020
The following is based on an essay by Seki Hei published in a special September issue of the monthly magazine WiLL.
The article, under headings including “China Is the World’s Largest Racist State” and “Arthur H. Smith Explains It—Then and Now: There Is No Word for ‘Liar’ in China,” discusses the questions of trust, truth, and mutual distrust in Chinese society through the writings of Arthur H. Smith, an American missionary who observed China in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
The essay, originally published in the June 2020 issue of WiLL, also refers to the Chinese government’s attempts to shift responsibility concerning the Wuhan virus and argues that some of Smith’s observations remain relevant to understanding contemporary China.
“There Is No Word for ‘Liar’”
Finally, there is the question of “trust.”
Seki Hei argues that few societies distrust others as deeply as China does and that Chinese society has historically been characterized by mutual distrust.
He then cites the following observation by Smith:
“In ordinary conversation, the Chinese do not necessarily tell outright lies, but neither do they necessarily tell the truth. Consequently, it is often extremely difficult to discover the truth. In China, truth is one of the hardest things in the world to obtain.”
Commenting on this passage, Seki Hei argues that material advantage is often given priority over truth and that this affects attitudes toward falsehood.
Smith also recounts an episode involving a foreigner with limited Chinese ability who, angered by the negligence of one of his servants, called him a “humbug.”
The servant later asked a woman with sufficient knowledge of English and Chinese to explain the frightening expression and, on learning its meaning, was deeply wounded by what he regarded as a devastating insult.
Seki Hei uses this episode to discuss what he sees as a distinction in Chinese linguistic and social attitudes between the act of telling a lie and identifying a person as a “liar.”
He illustrates his point with an analogy.
Japanese people eat white rice every day, yet no special expression is used to describe someone simply as a “rice eater,” because the act is regarded as ordinary.
In the same way, Seki Hei argues, the absence he identifies of an exact everyday equivalent of “liar” reflects what he regards as the social familiarity of lying.
He then turns to another subject: distrust among Chinese people themselves.
Smith cites the proverb, “Do not enter a temple alone. Do not look into a well with another person,” and explains it as follows:
“We ask in astonishment why a man should not enter a temple courtyard alone. The answer is that a monk might seize the opportunity to kill him. Why should two people not look together into a well? Because if one owes the other money, or if one possesses something the other desires, one might seize the opportunity to push the other into the well.”
Seki Hei interprets the underlying message as: trust no one.
He contrasts this with the advice commonly given to young adults in Western societies—that society contains both honest and dishonest people and that one must therefore exercise caution.
His argument is that, in the social world described by Smith, suspicion is treated not as an exception but as an assumption of everyday life.
The observations of Arthur H. Smith in nineteenth-century China and Seki Hei’s interpretation of contemporary China raise a broader question.
The issue is not merely the character of individual people.
It is the role of trust as a foundation of society, and whether truth or immediate interest is given greater priority within social relations.
To be continued.