Arthur Smith was one of the top Sinologists of the late 19th century and early 20th century, and Chinese Characteristics is the book which best synthesizes his opinions on Chinese culture and society. He spent more than 50 years in China as a missionary and his opinions range from insightful and profound to inappropriate and ridiculous, but even the sections of the book that today seem to reflect Western cultural arrogance are entertaining and enlightening in terms of the Western mindset towards China at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries.